Northern Exposure

by Michael Kilian

  “It’s logical.”

  Showers pursed his lips and slid further down in his chair, holding the whiskey glass on his chest. Joyce wondered how a man who almost never took off his coat could have arms so tan. He wondered why people so white and so rich and so superior could aspire to a condition of skin they found despicable in people like him. But Joyce had been wondering that for years, to no useful point. He drank his beer, watching as Showers put his head back and closed his eyes.

  “What should I do if Laidlaw does indeed produce Felicity, Mr. Joyce? Take her off to the south of France? Go back to Washington with her? I’m a married man, with a twenty-five-year-old mistress, don’t you know. I’m wanted for murder. I may have no job.”

  “You can clear that bombing mess up, a man like you, with your connections.”

  Showers opened his eyes, looking up at the ceiling.

  “Perhaps I should send Felicity off by herself somewhere, to some safe, bucolic little sanctuary, a cottage in Westchester, or up in Putnam County, a place I might visit regularly, if she’d be willing? Would she, Mr. Joyce? If I’m able to remove her and us from this predicament tomorrow, what will I have done? Rescued her? Redeemed her? Reached back through time to this old love of mine and made us as one again? Or found some stranger? What will I have accomplished with this horrible misadventure but to satisfy my curiosity? And will Felicity have even that feeling for me?”

  “She called you, my man. She called for help.”

  “Yes she did. But it was for him. All for him. And if Laidlaw takes Porique out of this, it’s with Porique she’ll want to go. Not me.”

  “But you’ll have helped her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hey, man, why are you talking this way? You got your main squeeze to think about.”

  “Alixe?” Showers smiled. “She is very, very charming. If there’s a kind of woman I’ve wanted all my life, it’s Alixe Reston. She is a perfect creation. But that’s out of the question now. She and I might as well be living in different dimensions, in different centuries. What she’s experienced these last days has been absolutely horrible, Mr. Joyce. I’m quite surprised she didn’t go back much sooner than she did. The more she thinks about it, I’m sure she’ll come to be angry and resentful. And her parents are no doubt outraged. It’s just impossible. I don’t suppose I’ll ever speak to Alixe Reston again.”

  “Hell no, man. She’s going to be testifying for you. She’s your alibi, your ticket out of that bombing rap.”

  “Her father wouldn’t permit it.”

  “She’s got a mind of her own, my man. She came along on this gig with you, didn’t she?”

  Showers abruptly thrust himself out of his chair, so quickly that he startled Joyce. He stood close by the window, glass held near his face, looking at the city. “A month ago, all of this would have been incomprehensible. I was a very correct foreign service officer, Mr. Joyce. No complications. No funny business with funny people in the White House. I did my duty as I saw it and I got ahead. I had this wonderful assignment coming. I had my marriage, and it was all right. Alixe was merely my neighbor’s daughter, someone a man my age would have fantasies about, nothing more. Felicity Stuart was just an old memory and a picture in my high school yearbook. I’d never heard of you.”

  “You’d prefer it that way?”

  “Not in your regard, Mr. Joyce. This has been an extraordinary companionship. Why, you’ve even taught me to carry my pistol in my belt in the back. What more could a man do for his fellow man?”

  He poured more whiskey into his glass. There were now a number of liquor bottles and beer cans standing about the room. Showers sipped, and then stretched. If there was anyone on the street below interested in wasting Showers, he’d never get a better shot. Showers turned away.

  “What are you going to do when you’re done with this?” he said.

  “Samo samo,” said Joyce. “If Laidlaw and his spooks don’t mess with me, I’se jes gonna keep on truckin’. Maybe buy my secretary Lucianne a new swivel chair for the office and take her out to dinner at Dominique’s, but otherwise just keep doing the same.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever had a case just like this one before.”

  “Well, my man, now that you mention it, that just possibly might be true. I had a woman in Georgetown once who hired me to go to the Bahamas and take telephoto pictures of her husband’s female companions, which was interesting, he being a U.S. Senator and all, but it wasn’t nowhere as interesting as this. Thankee for the two thousand big ones. I guess that just about settles up the score.”

  “You have more coming than that, Mr. Joyce. I’ll see that you get it.” He went back to his place close by the window.

  “Tell you what, my man,” Joyce said. “When all is said and done, let’s the four of us go have dinner at Dominique’s.”

  “You mean with Felicity?”

  “I mean with the princess. You gotta be dizzy to walk away from a squeeze like that.”

  For a long time Showers said nothing. When he finally spoke, there was an odd catch to his voice. “Mr. Joyce, do you know what’s out there in all those lights across the river?”

  “Some nasty folks trying to blow us away?”

  “My life. The life I desired and fought for and have almost achieved. One of those lights there is the American embassy. You wanted to get out of Baltimore, Mr. Joyce. You wanted to become a lawyer, to become something better. You became what you are, but you got out of Baltimore, and you got what you wanted. In the American embassy there, is what I wanted. A desk, an office, a superior rank, and an assured future. That old country road we went to in Westchester, where I left that bottle of Scotch. That road led here, Mr. Joyce. That job of deputy chief of mission was my redemption. It meant that I would become an ambassador, that my success would be inviolate. The desperate young man who had hitchhiked out of town with no money would have succeeded not only beyond his wildest dreams but beyond whatever success had been achieved by those who had treated him as such a pathetic joke. I know that sounds childish, but it’s been of consuming importance to me, as maybe someone like yourself can understand.”

  “I understand, my man.”

  “Well, Mr. Joyce. There it is. Just across the river. But here am I. It’s in sight, and almost in reach. But it’s not in reach. And it may never be again. It probably will never be again.”

  “All you have to do is go back and do the right thing, my man. All will be well.”

  Showers quickly finished his drink in a few swallows, though it had been two-thirds full.

  “I’m going to bed now, Mr. Joyce,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’ll get this over with.”

  “And you’ll see Felicity Stuart.”

  Showers lay on the bed that Alixe had bloodied, and didn’t mind. There was still Alixe’s scent upon the pillow. It comforted him, though he was thinking about another woman, about Felicity, about what had gone wrong with the two of them, about slender Felicity naked in his arms.

  Adolesence is only childhood thrust unwilling into adulthood, and Showers had suffered in it as much as any other. But what had been between him and Felicity so long ago hadn’t anything to do with childhood. I had been a relationship better understood in medieval times, when a man of thirty was elderly.

  It had been an adult relationship between children. Henry II, the greatest of English kings, had assumed the throne at twenty-one, and married years before. How like a medieval lady Felicity had looked when first they had met, at Mr. McQuillan’s first social studies class held outdoors beneath the trees on a hot early September day. So demure, so perfect, her wide skirt spread around her on the grass, her fingers toying with a sprig of clover, listening as Showers had pompously held forth with a fifteen-year-old’s dissertation on the Communist Manifesto, taking quick glances at him. He had stared at her.

  Why had he not more honorably and directly approached the success he had come to, with Felicity at his side? Why had something so perfect and pr
obable as life with her been so ruthlessly denied him? He could not blame himself, for he had only believed in his father, and his blithe father had brought colossal financial ruin upon them with devastating swiftness, with no warning. The disgrace and humiliation that logically followed had provoked an obsession with money that had quicky snuffed out his ardor for Felicity, his ardor for anything else.

  Why had not Felicity saved him from that? Why had she gone on her own way?

  He was, actually, very drunk. Remembering her beneath the trees, her skirt a circle on the warm September Westchester lawn, he fell asleep.

  She had freed herself from fatigue. She had done it once again with drinking. She had been so bloody painfully aching in the neck and shoulders tired. She had been dying of tired. But with the drinking, the cool red wine drinking, the easing, soothing, lifting hashish, god drug, savior drug, mind-healing loving drug, she was transcending, rising, lying all naked on her bed, naked in the heat of the night, naked beneath the stars in the hazy window sky, her mind clearing crystal tinkling clear, her hands running warm-cool over her flesh.

  Tomorrow then. Bloody tomorrow then. It was bloody damn tomorrow coming and she hadn’t reached Toby Showers. She had tried she had. Drunken man voice. French voice, woman’s voice, rich bitch voice. Messages, messages, but nothing returned. No Toby. No help. Only bloody tomorrow. Alone tonight, alone. No damn matter. The abode was in the mind, the saintly concepts transcend the fleshly grope.

  But damn oh bloody good god damn how the fleshly grope could become the saintly concept. Hail Mary, full of grace. Hear my confession, Father, for I have sinned. I am sinning now, oh beautiful Father, as I look into your beautiful eyes, asking the eternal question. Are there cocks beneath the cassocks, good Reverend Father? Are there cocks in heaven? At the center of the universe, is there not a cock?

  A sound, a sound out there in the Canadian streets. A Canadian sound, and so no business of hers. She was just Mehitabel the cat, toujours gai toujours gai, wandering where she would, wandering to Canada, and wandering on, following her swain, following wherever he might lead. To Canadian sounds. She had sought, had sought.

  French ones.

  Another gulp of rich, rich wine. See the smoke all white float up the stars shine through. Where is the moon? Who has lost the moon this fine last night? Who would steal her moon? Toby Showers had stolen her moon. He had given her the moon. Bright, pretty, silver, misty, Halloween moon, the village fields, the village green, good old Toby, damn good Toby.

  Mais cela n’importe peu it’s been fun all that sort of rot alas the fleeting years float by you bastard you dear bastard you dear old damn good bastard drunk, drink drank drunk, drunk the rage, rage against the dying of the glorious hurrahs O dear dead holy God. Holy Ric handsome Ric salvation strong hard arms a cock a lovely cock alas the fleeting years float by cela n’importe alas life is so long, oh so long, yet at once it comes to an end, an end, an end to the trivialities and particulars. So bloody tired. So tired. Bloody tired.

  At the very top of the Peace Tower, in a hard wooden room above all the city, Porique lay on the hard wooden floor, smoking, staring up through the narrow window at the night sky that showed no city. He was serene.

  “I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain,” Camus had written.

  One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

  So had the essay ended.

  A distant but unexpected sound caught his hearing but did not startle him. He listened, smoking, for its recurrence, but it did not come. Nothing drew nearer. Nothing alarmed him. He knew this building better than any schedule-bound guard, and he had chosen this room well.

  He lay still, enraptured by his thoughts. He had hours enough, and out the window, emptiness enough, a lingering, visible nothingness. It was all he desired.

  23

  The first killings of what would constitute the Canadian civil war occurred before dawn in the Arctic summer twilight of the far Northwest Territories. Following a narrow, flat valley, moving at night to reduce the chance of detection, Akvik and his villagers were just two miles from a major pumping station and junction of the great pipeline, their snowmobiles moving at a careful but steady pace over the mushy tundra.

  It was Akvik who first heard the helicopters. He had heard them distantly in the past few days, but now they were nearer, the sound approaching directly from the distant horizon, hunters closing in on their prey.

  Akvik raised his hand, halting the small convoy. The nearest mountain slope with its rocks and cover was more than two miles away. The pipeline itself was no more than a mile. They had been following it like a track. He motioned to his right, turning his machine and accelerating noisily. The white men would not shoot at them if they were under the pipeline. The white man worshipped the pipeline. But the helicopters came irresistably, and were soon in view, two of them, searchlights stabbing, probing through the gloom.

  Akvik was the village headman, and a brave and skillful hunter, but not wise in the ways of the white men and their machines. He should have waited then for the helicopters to land, and waited for the white men to approach, before opening fire. But he was frightened by the machines, and he panicked. As soon as he saw the Canadian Forces on the lead helicopter, he began shooting. His men, as quickly as they could, followed his example, but it was much too late. As the helicopter abruptly began a circling dance through the sky, the twin machine guns in its nose unleashed two stuttering streams of orange fire that quickly began to rip apart the men and machines of Akvik’s village. A round detonated the explosives in one of the drag sleds. The ensuing blast was brutal, sending a rattle along the skin of the pipeline all the way to the pumping station, frightening a herd of caribou many miles away.

  Sebastien, wearing a raincoat despite the gathering heat, went to the door of the Papineau Fils headquarters and was admitted upon recognition. The bearded boy who let him in was alone in the hallway. Sebastian fired quickly at the boy’s chest through the pocket of his coat, the big bullet hurling him against the wall. The silencer on the pistol left sound enough to alert others in the house, but by the time the first of them came thumping down the stairs, Sebastien had flung the door wide open to admit his men. He fired twice with deadly effect at the youth on the stairs, then stepped aside as his five men rushed past, two of them clambering over the sprawled, bleeding body, the other three moving through the main level of the house, shooting a man in a black T-shirt trying to rise from a drugged sleep on the front room chesterfield, hurrying to the kitchen, where they shot a red-haired girl cowering by the refrigerator several times in the chest and head. Then they took up positions by the door to the cellar.

  Sebastien heard the “thwump, thwump, thwump” of silencer-softened gunshots upstairs. A moment later, his men came downstairs again. “Un homme settlement,” said one of them.

  Sebastien nodded, then paused to drink from his flask of whiskey. He had two outside men covering the basement exit from the building. Those in the cellar were perfectly trapped. Splendide.

  Sebastien eased open the cellar door and swung it back against the wall. He could see nothing down the wooden stairs, but the stupid bastards had left the light on. “Alors!” he said. “Give up! Come up here, single file, hands on head, no guns, or, vraiement, we will kill you all.”

  He heard some low cursing, but none of them stirred.

  “Monsieur,” said one of Sebastien’s men, “they have explosives, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Peut-être. We will see. If they do, we will see if they are fanatics or cowards.”

  He borrowed a silencer-equipped machine pistol from another of his men, went
to the edge of the doorway, and emptied an entire clip down the stairway. There were two loud gunshots in reply, but nothing else.

  “I think they are cowards,” Sebastien said. He went to the kitchen and grabbed a hold of the dead girl’s arm, dragging her body to the threshold and kicking it violently down the stairs. Arms and legs lifelessly flailing, the body tumbled to a grotesque heap at the bottom.

  “Give up or that will happen to each and every one of you, soon!” Sebastien shouted. “Come up now, and you will get justice. Wait, and you get death.”

  There was more cursing, and then some low conversation in French. Someone was sobbing, a female someone.

  “Maintenant!” Sebastien roared. At his gesture, several of his men fired down the stairway.

  “Assez!” cried a voice from below, which Sebastien recognized as Macoutes’. “We are coming you bastard fascist traitors to Quebec! We are coming you dirty prick bastard flics! You filthy jerkoff shits!”

  Sebastien retreated out of sight to the alcove that was the kitchen pantry, listening and waiting as they stumbled and clumped up the stairs and assembled, hands on head, in the hall. Then he joined them. They were four, a small, mousy girl with long brown hair and glasses; a large, thuggish, badly shaven youth with fat cheekbones; the informer du Chien; and Leon Macoutes, whose eyes bulged as soon as he saw Sebastien.

  “You …”

  The words died as he did, from two of Sebastien’s bullets. The other males died almost as quickly. He spared the girl, who was whimpering.

  “Ma petite, you play at revolution,” Sebastien said, “not knowing this is what it is. You will come with me. I wish to talk to you.” He took her hand.

  “Clean up this mess. Stack their bodies and gather up their weapons. Fire some so it doesn’t look so one-sided. Then call the RCMP. And Dr. Mouflet. Vite, vite! There will be police here soon enough as it is!”

  Sebastien led the girl into the downstairs bathroom, making her kneel in the grimy bathtub facing away from him while he sat on the toilet-seat lid.