by Mark Lisac
Asher conceded that he had experience in high-end commercial deals and a little knowledge of politics, but said he paid more attention to sports and travel than to whatever was happening at the legislature. With coffee served, he turned to business.
“Did Angela tell you the story that her husband dug up about Devereaux and Manchester?”
“She did,” Jensen said. “We didn’t know how much of it to believe. It didn’t matter to us one way or another. We don’t pay much attention to politics. But I could see how it would disturb any number of people if it got out.”
“Did she tell you anything else?”
“No, she said the less we knew, the better for us. She told us the Devereaux story only to give us a sense of what was involved. She said we were the only people she could trust with it, because we were old friends and we were far enough away that no one was likely to think we knew anything.”
“It should be over with. Devereaux is dead. George Manchester is slipping into senility. There’s been no activity ever since Gordon Finley got shot. What bothers me, though, is that someone was looking for whatever written records Apson may have turned up. There’s no way to be sure that they’ve let the matter drop. That means there’s some risk for Gordon, possibly even for me.”
“Why would anyone be concerned about some kind of evidence turning up?” Olivia Jensen asked. “Surely, as you say, there’s no one left who’s affected.”
“That’s the objective view,” Asher said. “What’s going on in someone’s mind is another matter. Are you all sure that Angela didn’t say anything more about what her husband may have turned up?”
“No,” Jensen said. “She didn’t say any more. We didn’t want to know more. Really, it was all just high-octane gossip anyway. Who knows how much of it was true?”
“That’s the second time you’ve sounded skeptical. Why do you say that?”
“You’re a lawyer. Would you take second-hand accounts into a courtroom, statements based on somebody said something to somebody?”
“The law has its own rules. People outside the courts have different ones.”
“True, but legal rules are usually based on common sense. I’m sorry we can’t help you further. Maybe it would be best just to let the whole matter drop. If nothing’s happened in nearly half a year …”
“What happened half a year ago was enough to last awhile. Gordon Finley will be dealing with the results for the rest of his life.”
“Yes, we’re real sorry about Gordon. Angela asked us to look out for him.”
Asher stood up. “Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll be on my way. It was a pleasure to meet all of you. Thank you for the coffee.”
The Jensens and Sommerfeld shook hands and said goodbye.
Jensen said, “Oh, while you’re here, maybe you’d like to take a look at something in the garage. Your car tells me you appreciate fine old machinery. I don’t have an old sports car, but it still may tickle your fancy.”
“It had better tickle someone’s fancy,” Olivia said, “given how much time you’ve spent out there working on it.”
Asher followed Jensen to the garage. Jensen flipped on the light and Asher saw, in a workshop corner, a partly built replica antique tractor with steel wheels.
“It’s a one-quarter scale model,” Jensen said. “A 1936 Case. Had to find something to do with my time. If it was a John Deere, it would be nearly the same colour as your car.”
“That’s going to be some machine,” Asher said. “Will it run?”
“Yup. Completely operable. Sometimes it’s enjoyable recalling the past. Sometimes it’s not worth it.”
Asher looked at him. “You mean it’s okay to revive old machinery, but old stories about people should be let go once the people are dead and buried.”
“Gordon got a leg blown off just because someone thought he knew something about the past. Why get someone riled up again? You have no stake in it.”
“No, nothing except living with the knowledge that he would still be walking around on two legs if it weren’t for me.”
“Well, if it comes to that, there’s no certainty in life. You saw those old photos of drill rigs in my office?”
Asher nodded.
“They all had pipes hanging from them. Drillers have been moving into coil tubing on service rigs. The straight pipes for exploration work are mostly handled now by mechanized arm lifts that raise them and couple them together. But there are still plenty of guys around used to working hands-on with pipes. Know what they call them?”
“No.”
“Cookie cutters. That’s because of the neat, round edge they leave when they fall and slice off part of a foot. Life can change on you in a split second.”
“I’m familiar with that.”
“Are you? And if you thought there was some chance it might happen to you again, would you be willing to get in touch with me? Angela asked us to look out for you, too, if we heard you were in some sort of trouble.”
“I’m used to looking after my own trouble.”
“What about Gordon? Any danger for you probably involves him.”
“What could you do for either of us?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not completely sure. But as you see, I’m used to putting things together and making things work. I have resources.”
“All your own, or do some of them come from Angela?”
“You already asked if she told us anything. She told us to help you if it looked like you needed help. I can see why she liked you, aside from maybe a little pigheadedness. Will you keep it in mind?”
“She told me once she had insurance.”
“I don’t know what she had,” Jensen said. “I know I don’t like having to visit her in a cemetery any more than you do.”
28
ASHER LEFT JENSEN IN THE GARAGE AND WALKED BACK TO his car. Kathleen Sommerfeld was waiting for him.
“It was a pleasure to meet you,” she said. “Are you heading home now?”
“Yes, it’s a beautiful day for driving.”
“It is. Would you care to go for a drive south instead of north, even if it means staying around here for the night when you get back?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I never believed that story about Devereaux and Manchester. There had to be a woman who was Devereaux’s mother. Where is she?”
“I’ve tried to look for some trace of her. She seems to have disappeared. Manchester must know something but he isn’t in a mood to talk, not to me anyway. My charm must not work on old men.”
“Just old women?”
“Women in general. And sometimes men who are looking for a lawyer to handle some business for them.”
Sommerfeld had been smiling. Now she turned serious.
“We talked it over. Maybe there’s something you’d like to see. Something that might make you change your mind about whether George Manchester was involved with a woman who was Orion Devereaux’s mother.”
“I thought John Apson had looked into all that. I don’t even know what exactly he found.”
“Me either. But I know he heard a story from someone or from a couple of people. Maybe he had something in writing too. I’ve spent most of my life looking after books and helping people read. They can tell you a lot. They aren’t everything and they aren’t always true. Even what you hear from people who are supposed to know isn’t always true. Sometimes the truth is written in the ground where people walked.”
Asher look
ed at her glistening brown eyes. “I’ve thought that you can tell the truth about people by looking at where they’re buried,” he said. “It’s like everything else is stripped away. You look at a grave and you can see the essence of what someone was, or feel it.”
She was smiling again. “Now you’re telling ghost stories. No, I’m not talking about ghosts. I’m talking about real physical evidence — something that says George Manchester may not have been Orion Devereaux’s father, that there’s a good chance someone else was. You’d have to see it to know.”
Asher asked himself how much he wanted to know now. Angela was dead, her brother was missing part of a leg. Pursuing a wisp felt like an extravagance. But with Angela dead and Sandra gone, what else did he have?
“All right. Let’s go. You need to get anything first?”
“Have sunglasses, will travel.”
They got into Asher’s car and drove up out of the valley, past the layers of grey mud and black lines of crumbling coal. The higher prairie land didn’t show any of the complicated and often violent geological history lying beneath its surface. It was a slightly rolling landscape of grain fields and pastures. The young plants were just starting to sprout green stalks. Puffs of mounded cumulus clouds drifted from one end of the bright blue horizon to the other.
They had a desultory conversation, alternating between talking and looking at the countryside. Sommerfeld said her son and daughter had moved off to cities. Her husband, who had known Fred Jensen in the oil industry, was off working on a three-month contract in Abu Dhabi. She hoped it would be his last overseas trip.
“At least he’s not working up north in winter,” she said. She didn’t like him travelling in winter, and she wasn’t sure she liked what was going on in the environment up there. “It’s one thing to drill a hole in the ground and have the oil or gas come up, even if you have to help it a bit. If you have to dig it up or melt it under the surface to get it to flow, maybe it was never meant to be disturbed.”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “But drilling for oil was never a sensitive business. And I like driving and flying even if it burns fuel. Plus, getting it out of the ground and refining it pays a lot of bills for a lot of people. For that matter, there’s not a lot that’s natural in the way people grow wheat and livestock these days.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s just that I can’t help feeling something’s wrong. Maybe you can’t have life without something that’s wrong. Adam and Eve.”
They crossed the TransCanada and entered irrigation country. He learned that she had got into library science because she had loved books since she was a child. Now books were only part of running a library. But the other part of it was that she had always liked the idea of helping people learn.
“A library is sort of a free-range school,” she said.
She asked about his hockey career. It wasn’t something he talked about but he found himself telling her.
“I had a scholarship to North Dakota. Played with the Fighting Sioux. That ended in my senior year. I bought a motorcycle and took it down there. It got pretty cold and snowy, but you could still use a bike up to early November. One day, an old woman who wasn’t looking and probably couldn’t hear walked out onto the street in front of me. I was hemmed in on both sides, so I put the bike down. Nearly got away with it but banged up my left arm pretty good. It healed up enough that I was able to play a couple of months later. Then I took a hit and fell hard on the arm when I was tangled up with another guy. Fell into the boards and bounced off them and landed hard on the ice. That was the end of any serious hockey. Thought the hockey might help me apply for a Rhodes Scholarship, or that I could make a third line in the NHL if I were lucky. I’d always thought ice was my friend. Maybe I didn’t treat it with enough respect. I still play a little pickup shinny.”
He talked less about his family, acknowledging only that he was divorced and had a daughter. He noticed that she did not press him for more detail.
She looked at the land and told him a little about growing up on a farm in the south. She enjoyed visiting with her cousins. They did things around the barn and a nearby creek that had probably helped turn her mother’s hair grey. In retrospect, it was probably sheer luck and youthful pliability that had allowed them to grow up in one piece.
The irrigated potato, hay, and grain fields gave way to more and more pasture land. The calves were trying out their legs, racing one another. Sommerfeld asked what Asher had meant by looking at people’s graves.
For a second time, he found himself talking about something he never otherwise did. He said he and Sandra had gone to London one summer when they were both in university. He was taking a break while sorting out what to do after hurting his arm. Sandra had relatives in England and had wanted to see the London theatres.
He went to Greenwich one afternoon while she was shopping on Oxford Street and ended up wandering into St. Alfege Church, where General James Wolfe was buried. He was surprised to find it also held the crypt of Henry Kelsey, whose name he remembered as one of the British explorers who had ventured into the west during the 1700s.
He had visited largely out of curiosity. There wasn’t much to see in the way of a monument. Wolfe was buried under the church floor, the way a lot of famous people in Europe were. But he had been struck by a strong sense of knowing the man. It was easy to fool himself because he had read a fair bit about Wolfe. Yet it felt real. Imagination or not, he felt he knew Wolfe’s real character — more than he ever could have from listening to lectures or reading books. That experience had sparked others.
He had begun to visit other graves. The others gradually became many others. He worried that it had become a compulsion, or maybe just an obsession. He admitted to himself that it was more than an eccentric, overindulged hobby.
“Funny thing about Wolfe’s crypt,” he said. “It’s in a church that was rebuilt in the 1700s on the site where an earlier church had stood since 1290. That earlier one fell down in a storm. Its foundation had been weakened by all the digging that had gone on inside and outside the walls to make graves. Think it’s a sign that we make too much of knowing where people are buried and marking the spots?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You can’t dwell in the past. You can’t forget it either. It’s hard to know what to do sometimes. What I’m taking you to isn’t a grave. It’s more a sign of life. It’s all from the past, though. When it’s in the past, how much difference is there?”
The land was becoming wilder now. They had driven past the last fences. Yet it was looking more quiet and natural. The road began to skirt the edge of a river valley, but not like the one they had left behind in Rosemont. This one had bushes and grass and cottonwoods all through, and none of the coarse, bare layers of sediment on the hillside.
Sommerfeld guided Asher toward the provincial park where native peoples had carved pictographs for a few centuries on flat, vertical outcroppings of sandstone. “Maybe some were carved by my mother’s ancestors,” she said.
She had him turn into a dirt lane just before the park boundary.
“This isn’t part of the main area,” she said. “There are some pictographs here that very few people know about. Some of the local white farmers and their kids knew about them. They carved their own graffiti in the rocks just like other people did for years in the main area inside the park. I sometimes think that if people really want to understand the difference between art and graffiti, all they have to do is come down here and look. Here — you can park in that little opening up on the right.”
They got out of the car. She led the way along what may once have been a path toward the steep side of the riverbank, grasses catching at their feet. She said this area was remote and little k
nown, although she supposed hikers got into it from time to time. But some local residents had known it decades ago. And they had known stories like the one she was going to tell him. Real stories about real people, the kind that did not end up in history books.
At the edge, she turned down along a narrow ledge and stopped. They looked across the silent valley with the small river rippling in a meandering line along its bed. The sunlight from the southwest was changing colour, the glare of midday softening toward the first pastels of evening. Far in the distance, on the Montana side of the border, they saw the hills that Sioux and Blackfoot had held sacred. There was hardly any breeze. They heard only the buzz of insects. Swallows veered and looped through the valley air. Higher and farther off were hawks.
“I’ve been to a few places on the prairies where you can tell why people thought they were spiritual,” Asher said. “It’s hard to look out at this and not feel there is something more than what you see.”
“It’s hard to understand why anyone would come here and wantonly carve their names into the stone,” she said. “Just to make themselves feel like they were alive and counted for something, I guess. Some people feel they have to wreck things to make their presence known. It’s like kids breaking things or killing ants.”
They watched for a few more minutes without speaking. Then she said, “It’s a place where you want to just feel the land and sky and do nothing, or where you want to do something important. Come around this next little bend.”
