Stung

by William Deverell

  I have lost my job, and the peanuts it paid, of teaching English to Syrians. Some tight-ass bureaucrat freaked out at the prospect of my instilling these refugees with revolutionary fervour. I don’t crowd-fund but I get online support, I get contributions. Just in: $500 from Muslims for a Carbon-Free Planet. A couple of my former language students were behind it. Cool.

  So this is my shtick, mostly, when I’m not out trying to save the world. I process words. I get in three hours a day on an old desktop Okie Joe restored for me. He set up some kind of program that backs up my daily output into the deep, deep Cloud and erases it from my hard drive. In case the law comes sniffing by again.

  I rarely go on social media — it’s a trollercoaster out there, the capslock warriors at the controls. Never fire back is the rule. Don’t feed the trolls.

  I never learned to type, so I peck. Magically, words appear. Sentences. Pages. Images. Suspense. Witty dialogue. Pot helps.

  Often I scroll back to the beginning, a year ago, when Operation Beekeeper was hatched. I reread and reread, fascinated: Was this me? Have I truly done something so wicked and glamorous?

  I’ve no idea what kind of literary animal this is: a diary, a journal, an autobiography, a non-fiction, thinly disguised fiction? Whatever, I am driven to get it all down, my memories, imagining myself back there, being there.

  When I’m not sure, I have guessed. Or used a little imagination. For instance, I had Chase D’Amato in the Arctic tundra, pining for me while eating moose steak by his fire and throwing the bones to his team of huskies. That was in an early draft, from three months ago. Now, as I light up a crumbled bud of sativa, I find that image stiff, sterile, unsatisfying.

  So instead shall I export my lover — my occasional lover — to . . . how about New Zealand? The mechanics of his getting there can be worked out later. He is on a beach surrounded by admiring women. A topless beach. Maybe bottomless. Why am I doing this to myself? Delete paragraph.

  The postcard Chase sent me was of fishing boats in the Bay of Biscay, in a kind of 1950s style, that he must have found in some collectibles store. It was postmarked January 4, Yellowknife, NWT. “Happy New Year to All Bee-ings!” No signature, his muscular, blocky handwriting.

  Chase probably had a friend mail it from Yellowknife. He knows the cops read my mail. Maybe he is in New Zealand. Or southern France. What he sent me was reassurance. I’m somewhere cool, I’m okay.

  I’m almost sure, again, that I’m in love with him. But what I feel could be something more basic: my old nemesis, fornication deficit. It’s been five months if you don’t count the performance poet with whom I did a drunken, fumbling one-nighter.

  After I spotted Howie last week, so sad and hunched over, so lonely and betrayed, I had a pornoroid dream, gripping a bat, ready to stroke one into the stands. But what I grip turns out to be Howie’s big, hard, pulsing cock. I woke up horny for him. Is that sick or just weird?

  My middle fingers start to peck: Howell J. Griffin looks so forlorn and lonely and betrayed that I feel yet another surge of guilt. But something aberrant too: desire. I feel I owe him love.

  * * *

  “Fucking cats.”

  Lucy is home, shouting, banging around, letting me know she needs to vent. My muse chides: Hey, stupid, don’t forget to back up this time. I copy to a USB drive, pocket it, rise, stretch, turn my phone’s ringer back on, and emerge.

  Sinbad is on the sofa, grooming himself. What prompted Lucy’s expletive was he’d pulled down Kropotkin’s portrait and rent it into shreds. An ironic gesture of defiance to the anarchist icon.

  “Can’t we just kill this cat?” she says. “We’ll tell Dr. Wenz he died of something. Cancer. Was in horrible pain. Had to put him down.”

  “Maybe you should show him a little love.”

  “I’m all out of love. Tank is empty. Fucking cat. Fucking Wozniak. He’s fucking a fucking Jesus freak.”

  She has lost Rockin’ Ray to a drug-free, booze-free existence as an adherent of the Assembly of the Lord Saviour Divine, a retro-hippie sect for those who saw God while doing — or at least recovering from — psychedelics. Lucy believes he adheres mostly to a sultry, holy-rolling Korean-Canadian whom he calls, ickily, Sooky-Sue.

  “And now he’s fucking moved in with her.”

  A third-floor walkup on Ossington, above her uncle’s Rapid-Loans franchise, catering to the poor and desperate. Ray still plays local taverns with Panic Disorder but has lost his chops. He looked shaky last I saw him, wasted, hollow-eyed. But that was before he found Jesus and Sooky-Sue.

  Lucy flops onto her fold-out couch. “How was that phone-in show?”

  “It shit the bed. I walked out on the slob. For that, I got up at five a.m.?”

  I tell her about Richard the Second picking me up in his flannel pyjamas, and how I’m worried I raised his expectations. “I gave him tongue. He got all flustered and red.”

  “Did he get a bone on?”

  “I never thought to check.”

  “He’s in pyjamas and it didn’t jump right up at you? I think he’s queer.”

  “I can’t do tonight’s book auction thing. Richard wants to pick me up for it. Do me one favour and I’ll never ask another for as long as I live. Please go with him.”

  “No way. He’s your surety. Your problem. I’ve got an organic chemistry paper to write.” Lucy lost her job too, but scored a student loan, is taking a full load this term, five classes.

  “You pick up the mail?” I ask.

  She gestures at the pile of flyers and envelopes on the dining table. “Nothing from Chase, sorry. A notice from Chemican’s attorneys basically telling us to shut the fuck up or they’ll charge us with criminal libel. Forwarded from Tragger, Inglis, Bullingham, which is where our big-shot lawyer supposedly works. Arthur What’s-his-name, I haven’t seen him for so long I forgot his name. Beauchamp. Pronounced Beech’m. Arthur Beauchamp. I’ve maybe seen him twice since we got busted. What’s he doing out there in his little hillbilly island except playing with his dong?”

  I too am wondering about Arthur Beauchamp’s commitment. He came on like he cared, cool, in control. He got us bailed, then he bolted at the first snowfall. Typical West Coaster.

  Chapter 14: Arthur

  1

  Saturday, February 23

  “Why are you holding a roll of paper towels?” Margaret asks. She’s dressed to go out. Off to a state reception of some kind. It’s five p.m. in Ottawa, cocktail time.

  “I forgot to get toilet paper,” Arthur says. “I forgot to write it down.” Or he did write it down, on one of the scribbled scraps that festoon the farmhouse, but forgot he’d done so. At his current rate of deterioration he’ll be in diapers soon, babbling.

  “Your phone has an app for reminders . . . Forget it.” Likely, she’s telling herself: don’t waste your breath; the dotard lacks the skills to run such an app.

  “I assume you’re sitting on the can as we speak.”

  “Exactly.” The lens of his FaceTime camera has him in a cold-weather plaid shirt with his suspenders down. It’s embarrassing. It doesn’t feel as private as the phone. What if he’s hacked, the image going out to millions, a Facebook joke?

  Margaret’s call came as he studied the forecast on this iPhone. More rain. He hopes that won’t slow up Stoney and Dog.

  She says, “By the way, I’m trying to reach Selwyn Loo. I’d give him a kiss, but I don’t know where he is.”

  “Berlin, dear. Trying to charm Professor Hoff to come out of hiding, and to bring his Nobel. The microbiologist.”

  “Dieter Hoff. I saw him on TV last summer, hyping his book. In excellent English, by the way.”

  Arthur is aware of that, and thankful — testimony through an interpreter causes jurors’ faces to go blank.

  Dr. Hoff, author of De-Pollination: Why Chemistry May Kill Life on Earth, is needed to
square off against an equally famous scholar whom the Crown is likely to call: Stanford’s Jerod Easling, entomologist, author of multiple books about bugs, and a popular talking head on science shows. The Crown has already sent the defence a copy of his written opinion, and to Arthur’s dismay its exoneration of neonics was telling and lucid.

  “Handsome, your Dr. Hoff,” Margaret says, “and I think he knows it. The lovely young thing doing the interview was about ready to go down on him. Anyway, he doesn’t seem shy, so why would he hide, and from whom?”

  “Maybe he’s just hiding from us. Not sure why. Not long ago he was eager to assist, and even gave us a rough draft of his opinion.”

  “So I imagine the SOQers have been wildly celebrating Selwyn’s triumph.”

  “There was an event at Al and Zoë’s last evening, so there will be a few hangovers today. They’re planning a more sober event tomorrow, after church gets out.”

  “Give everyone a hug for me. Even Taba.”

  Arthur is taken aback by the lack of vitriol. Maybe, just maybe, she is summoning the grace to forgive.

  The Appeal Court ruling came down yesterday morning. A narrow, qualified victory for Selwyn Loo and Quarry Park, a blow to TexAmerica Stoneworks. By three to two, the Appeal Court quashed the rezoning bylaw, holding that the Trustees, while not accused of improper motives, acted despite “a total lack of environmental assessment.” The dissenters held that mining rights trumped conservation rights, bylaw or no bylaw.

  “It’s more of a reprieve than a victory,” Arthur says. “Now TexAmerica and its two puppet Trustees must at least pretend to do due diligence. For the right price they may find a wildlife biologist to say the swallows and falcons aren’t threatened. Our backup strategy should be a recall petition, to quickly replace the two Trustees. That’s on tomorrow’s agenda.”

  Arthur would like to wipe, flush, and rise, but can’t imagine how to do that and maintain any semblance of decorum. It doesn’t help that his sense of balance is impaired — he twisted an ankle yesterday by stepping into the latest Ulysses hole, a cavern near the garden gate.

  “Meantime, my dear, we are soon to have a manpower deficit. Stefan will leave in April for his wildlife refuge.”

  Both know Solara can’t handle the extra burden, especially with the Sarnia Seven trial upcoming. So Arthur will retain Stoney and Dog for odd jobs, and a neighbour will help with the animals.

  “How’s the dig? Found Jeremiah’s body yet?” Visible merriment on the screen. If all goes well at the well, he will pay her back for all her needling.

  “Stoney promised to work through the weekend. He and Dog should be at the site now. Ulysses and I shall be on our way presently.”

  They came by yesterday to borrow his tractor with its narrow scoop — “for the fine work,” Stoney said. Arthur couldn’t get up there, because of his ankle, but could hear the grunts of the backhoe from the house.

  “I hope this isn’t a fool’s errand, Arthur.” A frown to mask her teasing smile.

  Arthur harrumphs. “The Historical Society is keen on the project. Unveiling island history. I don’t think I’m obsessive.”

  “Of course you are, darling. You keep seeing Jeremiah Blunder.”

  “A couple of locals have seen him too.”

  “Local drunks.”

  “I like to think he’s trying to tell us his body is still in the well — he’s never been properly buried.”

  “Uh-huh. And why is he always clutching a jug of his homebrew?”

  Arthur doesn’t know. A warning from a fellow alcoholic of the perils of drink? He conjures a picture of skeletal fingers gripping his jug to the bitter end.

  After they disconnect, Arthur reflects on Margaret’s seeming change of heart: Give everyone a hug for me. Even Taba. Was she mocking him? No, that sounded sincere, an acceptance that Arthur’s seductress is a leading comrade in the struggle, and deserves a hug equal to the others.

  In fact, he had already hugged Taba, last night, at Al’s and Zoë’s. Or, more passively, he was hugged by her. He’d gone behind a tree for a pee. Taba spotted him as he zipped up, gave him not just an embrace but a boozy kiss.

  But everyone was hugging and kissing. And anyway she has a more reliable married boyfriend now in Herman Schloss. At the party, she clearly relished her role as the handsome tycoon’s steady. She flashed Arthur an occasional grin that seemed to say: “I offered — I bet you’re sorry now.”

  Why does that annoy him? He’s free now, he has fought temptation and won. She has moved on to greener pastures.

  2

  As Ulysses races into the house to accept the leash, he skids on the kitchen tiles and topples a pile of folders from the table. Spilling from them, decorated with large, dirty paw prints, are expert reports and studies, correspondence, opinions on the law, maps, charts, surveys, and graphs — Selwyn sends him a packet of these each week.

  Arthur will unsnarl the mess of files later. He’ll have to read them one of these days. He knows they are important, feels like a child avoiding homework, but he just can’t find the strength. Yet the trial of the Sarnia Seven is only three months hence.

  Thinking about it oppresses him. He frets over Nancy Faulk’s conspiracy theory — she has learned that Azra Khan is a curling buddy of the Chief of the Superior Court of Justice; they’re in the same club in Rosedale. The Chief has power to choose a judge for Regina v. Knutsen et al from a rota of ninety in Toronto. “We may end up in front of some crazy conservative ideologue,” Nancy said in one of her occasional phone calls.

  Arthur said, “Then we will be glad to have twelve sane jurors.”

  Meanwhile, he has no clear understanding of the necessity defence. He’s not sure how to raise it, or how it works. Only once in his five decades at the bar has he heard it argued.

  That was in 1975. Performing an abortion was then a crime, and Henry Morgentaler had defied that law. As a young barrister, Arthur had sat in on the famed abortion doctor’s appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. The issue was whether an abortion was necessary to preserve the patient’s health.

  Astonishingly, Morgentaler, acquitted by a Quebec jury, was convicted on appeal. Even more astonishingly, the Supreme Court upheld that reversal, an insult to that great democratic institution, the jury system. The majority court sneered at the necessity defence as an “ill-defined and elusive concept.”

  However elusive, the defence seems applicable, for instance, to avail a mother who steals to feed her starving baby. It was used in the nineteenth century to defend shipwrecked mariners who resorted to cannibalism. Less sensationally, the defence has been used in traffic court, where a speeder may plead he was taking an injured friend to hospital.

  But how it might apply to a well-planned break-in and theft from a chemical plant? The defence doesn’t operate when a lawful course of action is available or when the defendant isn’t in direct, immediate peril. The test comes down to this: Was there any way out?

  He grabs a walking stick to take weight off his ankle, sticks the leash in his pocket, and opens the door for Ulysses, who romps away.

  Someone — probably Solara, who is forgetful — left the driveway gate unlatched, and it has swung open. Ulysses notices that, then looks proudly at Arthur, letting him know he has pulled himself together, is no longer tempted by an open gate. Stefan has worked hard to check his wandering ways: talking dog to him, teaching him obedience, rewarding him with meaty bones.

  Ulysses divines they are heading to the big dig, and takes off up the north pasture. Arthur follows, through the orchard. The rain has given way to occasional showers and, in defiance of the sombre forecast, a slice of blue has appeared to the southwest. It widens as they amble up the pasture toward the woods. Apollo, that rare winter visitor, bashfully peeks out, blinks, then covers up.

  A single ray of sunshine makes one’s day at Blunder Bay in February, esp
ecially after weeks of sopping rain, the winters made ever wetter by the inexorable march of climate change. Still, there has been no snow, and no toe got frozen. He feels sorry for his fellow countrymen who must brave the biting cold of, say, Toronto, where it is well below zero. Nothing will seduce him into going there until he is absolutely needed.

  As Ulysses leads him down into the bracken-thick bottomland, the sun sends more darts, through leafless alders and willows, sketching the almost inevitable caricature of a grizzled old-timer doing his ghostly rounds with a jug. Arthur laughs it off this time; he no longer wants to play this game. He has created these images because he enjoys the notion that Jeremiah sends clues from the afterlife, he wants to be the great detective who solves a great murder mystery.

  At which point his wife will apologize for mocking him.

  Something is bothering him. It comes to him suddenly: it’s the missing sound effects from the direction of the well site. He prays they are on mid-afternoon beer break.

  Ulysses has gone ahead, as scout. That he doesn’t soon return suggests he doesn’t want to bear bad news.

  Arthur urges himself on, his ankle throbbing, finds Stoney’s backhoe near a stack of neatly fallen alder trees, branches bucked and piled. Dog’s two chainsaws are under a tarp, along with two twelve-packs of empties. Ulysses busily chews on a leather work glove.

  The backhoe’s engine compartment is open, wrenches and tool bits lying in rain puddles. Arthur closes it. Sunk into the ground near the well site, its rear wheels half hidden in the mud, is Arthur’s tractor.

  * * *

  The sun has quit trying but the day remains pleasant, so Arthur decides to do a proper hike, exiting by the north gate. Ulysses takes the lead up a well-trod shortcut toward Centre Road, then races ahead, alarming Arthur — Garibaldi’s main connector can be dangerous for unleashed dogs. He calls, whistles, but Ulysses disappears from view where the trail hooks to the left.