She’d shed the last vestiges of punk, was plain and unadorned and somehow lovelier. Paul told her he’d have some new interviews for her to transcribe soon, but she didn’t hear. Gina was telling her about the new business, the long slog through paperwork and grant applications, collaborating with two other women to buy a van with a deep fryer and grill, a smaller version of what Gina used at tree-planting camps, something they could take to summer festivals and farmers’ markets.
“Sounds fun,” Sonya said pensively. She was helping Shane cut his waffle into tattered, sticky pieces and seemed about to say something more when Jory jumped down from the railing where he’d been perched, ignoring everyone.
“Yo, check these out.” He passed around his phone, where he’d stored photos of his latest backcountry expedition. His nose and cheeks were sunburned and raw, giving him a wild-eyed raccoon look. He was a train wreck these days, irresponsible and inconsiderate, but still sweet-natured beneath it all. He’d scrounged up a pair of skis for Paul from the cluttered backroom of his store—“you know, if you stick around for next winter”—and a kid-sized snowboard for Shane. But he no longer draped himself over Sonya, and never shared in her conversations except to argue.
As for Paul, any fantasies involving Sonya were derailed by the prospect of humiliation. Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine patience or mercy from someone her age. No, his tenuous recovery, his fragile happiness, was wrapped up in Gina. Sonya, as an object of desire, was too much of a stretch, overmatched by his complicated reality. Poor Jory. They were both losing her.
The results of his blood sample had come back clean, his PSA levels decently low—a reason for his own secret celebration. Only now did he realize how tightly he’d held on to his apprehension all winter. Don’t dwell on each individual test, the doctor advised, pay attention to how the antigen levels trend over time. So, a six-month respite until his next PSA test, when his anxiety would grow again, in the same creeping manner as cancer cells. Time, for him, was a snow cave, carefully cleared to house an unknown amount of future, in constant danger of collapse.
7
“I’m told the road’s clear of snow past Dalton Creek,” Lazeroff said. It was the first weekend of May, and the hills above Shellycoat were still in the last throes of winter.
“We’ll need to bring Jory along,” Paul said. “He knows that part of the river; I’m hoping he can show us some trails if we’re going to explore around the Flumes.”
“Sure. Wear good boots.”
They stopped to gas the truck outside of town. Jory slouched quietly in the back. The fight upstairs last night had been especially loud and nasty, and his young friend had spent the morning brooding in Paul’s apartment. He hadn’t been all that keen to come along, and wasn’t curious about why they were driving to Dalton Creek. Paul and Lazeroff both spied on him in the rear-view mirror. He had his headphones on, eyes squeezed shut, lips moving silently, and he softly tapped the side of his head against the window. Not in rhythm to the scratchy, frantic music, which Paul could faintly hear, but in quick bursts of three, as though he were imagining or practising doing the same thing much harder. Teeing up for the big hit. Lazeroff, who’d raised melodramatic teenagers, gave Paul an irritated, grimly amused look.
In the silence, Paul thought about last night. He and Gina had finally, successfully, made love—sort of. There were awkward pauses and positions, and they had to go slowly and start again several times. Stuffable, indeed. Before his cancer, last night would have been completely devastating. You could get used to anything, it seemed.
Near Bishop, a solitary man was burning a small pile of dead brush on his lawn, and in another yard a dirtbike and ATV were freshly spattered with dark mud. As they left the reservoir behind and the river appeared, Jory suddenly perked up. “Freshet’s on. Look at that. It’ll top the banks.”
The Immitoin had already flooded in some places, leaving puddles that spanned the width of the road. The current ran grey and brown with sediment and heaped logs and debris against boulders. The turnoff to the Spry Creek logging road was marked with ribbons, and a large signboard—Ruin of the River—was a soggy mess.
“Classic stretch,” Jory said. “Launch from the mouth of Spry Creek and ride it out until Bishop. Beautiful.”
“Not right now,” Lazeroff said. “That’d be crazy.”
“Insane,” Jory said cheerfully.
Dark smoke rose thickly from the chimney of Hardy’s cabin, the driveway a soup of mud and broken spruce and fir branches. “Talked to him lately?” Lazeroff asked. “No letters in the paper this spring. Strange for him.”
Paul shrugged uneasily. They continued on, tires skidding on the road’s slick clay, past Basket Creek—an unexpected pang of anguish at the sight of it—and climbed until they reached the pullout above the old mill site.
“Let’s walk down from here,” Lazeroff said. The air smelled of lingering snow, and the ground beneath them was matted with dead leaves. Snow press had flattened the dead grass on the bench of land, exposing the rusted scraps and springs of metal. Jory headed straight for the edge of the embankment.
“The Flumes!” he shouted back with pride. “Fucking maelstrom.” Paul caught up to him. The boulders where he’d seen Jory play were under constant assault from torrents of muddy water. The rapids of September, with their neat spiral shapes and subtle undertows and currents, had been replaced by an incomprehensible raging.
“Patterns are sure different,” Paul said.
“There is no pattern.” Jory took a step forward, his eyes never leaving the river.
Paul turned back to the constable. “So what are we looking for?”
“You tell me,” Lazeroff said.
“Me?”
“You’re the one who looks at all the maps and stuff.”
Jory was in a trance, muttering to himself. Paul clapped him on the shoulder, startling him. “We’ll drive up this summer. Maybe I can film you sessioning the Flumes.” Jory’s lip curled sharply in contempt. It was a stupid offer, Paul conceded, totally condescending, and he immediately felt old and lame. They returned to the field. He gestured toward the forest beside them. “Okay. So there’s Dalton Creek. Caleb Ready’s claim.”
“His father’s, actually. Purchased it in 1933,” Lazeroff said. He’d obviously done his homework and was testing him for a bit of fun. But Paul was prepared.
“Caleb’s father was killed at the end of the Second World War,” he said. “Do I get a prize?”
“Nope. The Ready claim runs from the bottom of Dalton Creek over there”—Lazeroff pointed—“up past the road. And extends less than fifty metres to either side.”
“Caleb made several offers for the mill site. Both the Wallace and Wentz families refused, of course.”
“Why’d he want it so bad?” Jory asked. He stood on a corroded oil drum, balancing on one foot.
Lazeroff shrugged. “Dunno. Would have been a good place for a little cabin, you know, right beside his father’s old claim. Maybe that was all.”
“Maybe,” Paul said. “Whatever the reason, he was furious when they said no. Stole half the crew and bullied their neighbours into selling their homes for half their worth.”
“Probably wasn’t the only reason he did what he did,” Lazeroff said. “Even so, sentiment can be a pretty powerful motive.”
“Why didn’t he just buy the place after the mill shut down?” Jory asked.
“Actually,” Lazeroff said, giving Paul a sly look, “there is one thing I haven’t told you.”
Paul thought a moment. “Hardy and Cyril still own the mill site. Damn. I’d always assumed this place reverted back to Crown land after the company went under.”
“No—I tracked down a copy of the deed.” The two men grinned at each other. They were like children dumping their bags of Halloween loot into a single pile on the floor. Paul regretted not bringing Elmer, who enjoyed more than they the way history could open up the world, renew and deepen it.
“Let’s get to the creek.” Lazeroff started off but was halted by the old Adanac stove. “I remember these. What a beaut.” Paul brushed off the top and pried at a compartment for him.
“Jesus,” Jory said. “This ain’t the fuckin’ Antiques Roadshow.” He charged ahead into the woods. The forest was cold and damp, the thick canopy of second-growth cedar and hemlock starving the spongy, matted floor of sunlight. Black leaves littered pools of meltwater. The Immitoin became a hushed roar in the background, a susurration in the gloom.
Dalton Creek was not wide, no more than two metres across here on the bench of land, and narrower as it descended steeply through the trees, a series of falls and small pools. They were standing in black sand at the edge of the water, the same dark substrate among the pebbles, the banks craggy with exposed rock. This was where Caleb’s father, and then Caleb, had worked this streambed, sifting through the black magnetite, deeply hypnotized by the symphonic voice of the creek. Each with his different hopes and expectations, his stubbornness and wilful impracticality.
Lazeroff grunted. “Maybe we’re starting too low. I assumed Caleb accessed the creek from the mill site, but why not from the road above?”
“He’d cut through the mill site to spite Hardy,” Paul said.
“Sure, but what about his ATV? And that compressor? He didn’t take them through here. I’ll bet he had access somewhere farther up. A skid trail off the main road, maybe.”
“But we’re also getting farther from wherever he fell in,” Paul said. Lazeroff agreed, but they continued upstream.
Jory had crossed the creek above them, hopping from stone to stone. “There’s something there,” he called, pointing. “Like a barrel.”
They found a semicircle of old staves jammed into the creek bottom. “A catch-basin,” Lazeroff said. He brushed leaves from the surface. “It’s lined with plastic. Look.” Black PVC piping snaked from the basin and through the forest. The young man laughed and then patted the constable on the back jokingly. “Looks like you missed one last year,” he said.
“Missed what?” Paul said.
“A grow op,” Lazeroff grunted. The piping led them through a pale copse of snags and deadfall until they reached the bottom corner of a regenerating clear-cut that sloped gradually uphill, ringed by thick stands of juvenile pine and larch. A stack of plastic buckets was hidden beneath a yew, and nothing but empty holes and a crude system of pipes remained where marijuana plants had grown in rows.
“Someone had to work the valves, check the lines,” Lazeroff said.
“Plus fertilize, pest control.” Jory grinned as the constable glared at him. “C’mon, everyone knows how this shit works.”
“Some more than others, apparently.” Lazeroff looked around. “Pretty good harvest.”
Jory shrugged. “Maybe eighty grand worth.”
“That’s about right,” Lazeroff agreed. “Certainly not the biggest I’ve seen. Doesn’t tell us anything about Caleb, though, unless you think he was the one growing.”
“Definitely not him,” Paul said, and Lazeroff nodded in agreement. “But what if it’s not a coincidence? Maybe someone planted their crop here as a type of joke, an irony. A kind of, I don’t know, poetic justice,” he argued. “Why grow pot this far up the Immitoin, where the season’s short and the soil bad—except to draw water and make a profit on Caleb’s claim? Or maybe scare him off, or bait him into a fight.”
Jory interrupted. “That’s a pretty crappy revenge tactic.”
“Not revenge,” said Lazeroff. “A territorial thing. A principle. I can guess who you’re thinking of,” he said to Paul.
“Gina told me she thought Billy had a grow op in the woods. She didn’t know where.”
Jory was still shaking his head, lips pursed in ridicule. “How about the simple answer, boys? This Caleb dude—assuming he’s not the grower—follows the pipeline, stumbles on some biker gang tending their patch, and they turf him in the river.”
“Okay. But why bother taking his car to Basket Creek?” asked Lazeroff.
“Beats the piss out of me.” Jory yawned irritably. “Same reason Billy Wentz would?”
Leaving the two of them to banter, Paul wandered through the plantation. Cyril and Billy, Hardy and Caleb: four men trying to hang on to their part of the valley’s history. Even Caleb, who helped destroy much of that history. Growing pot, logging, fishing, prospecting—each was a means of staying connected to their fathers’ different legacies, no different from the customs and habits Elsie and his other participants cultivated to maintain their roots in the land below the reservoir. The bit of money they pulled from the water and soil hardly mattered, was simply a way to keep score, to lend flesh to the ritual of memory.
They were above the mouth of Dalton Creek, where it tumbled from a shelf of rock down sheer granite banks treacherous with spray and mist. Jory explored along the Immitoin, working his way downstream. Paul and Lazeroff searched the pools, nooks, and quieter spots where Caleb might have rested or stashed a tool.
“I found something,” Lazeroff said uncertainly. “By the stump here.” He handed Paul a dented pan stained green. “Probably not his. Too old.”
Paul turned it in his hands. “His father’s, maybe.”
“Maybe. Check out that conk,” Lazeroff said. The orange fungus extended like an autumn-coloured clamshell from the trunk of a fallen tree. He made a half-hearted attempt to pry it loose with a jackknife.
“Let’s say that was Billy and Cyril’s grow op up above,” Paul said. “Do you think they would drive here every few days?”
“They’d have to.”
“Unless they had help. Someone to look after things.”
“Hardy, you mean.”
“Exactly.”
“If the grow op belonged to the Wentzes,” Lazeroff said. “You think Hardy ran into Caleb at the plantation or walking through the mill site. Or here. And something happened.”
“Yes. Except—why phone the police about the body?” Paul said.
“Trying to look innocent. Guilty people make that mistake all the time.” Lazeroff gave up on the conk, put his knife away. “Mind you, when we fished Caleb out—he did not enjoy seeing that, I’ll tell you. Didn’t strike me as a performance.”
“Hey!” The shout was manic and alarming. Jory stood at the beach where’d he’d launched his kayak last fall, where the grey boulders stacked together across the width of the Immitoin to create the Flumes. He was pointing urgently at the largest stone in the middle of the river.
“What?” Lazeroff boomed impatiently.
“Marks! Words!” Jory’s voice was faint because he’d already leaped from the shore onto the first rock, his feet sliding a bit before gripping. Paul hadn’t noticed before how lousy Jory’s shoes were, a ratty pair of sneakers. A small hesitation, then Jory jumped onto the next boulder, then the one after that.
“What the good goddamn,” Lazeroff said.
Paul would never know if Jory really believed he’d seen something on the rock. He would remember only smooth granite faces polished by centuries of water and scoured by sand, maybe a few divots and ledges that could possibly be mistaken as petroglyphs or engraved intials. More likely Jory had needed an excuse to appear useful, in order to do something that had no reason or purpose, a thrill. Tramping around in the woods had been a bad idea: the boredom and quiet just amplified Jory’s bleak thoughts.
Maybe another reason: Jory loved the Flumes. Paul remembered the day he first met him, when the young man had hidden his fear, entered the rapids, and become inseparable from them.
When he saw one of Jory’s feet slip, Paul had already crossed Dalton Creek and was running. A fallen tree blocked his path and, still in motion, without thought, Paul placed his hands and vaulted over the deadfall, his legs tucked close to his body. He bungled the vault and crashed full-speed onto the forest floor, but then tumbled forward and used the momentum to regain his feet and stop his slide toward the river below—hours of practic
e not quite forgotten. His feet lightly touched fallen trees, found the sturdy mounds of earth between the jumbles of slash and brush. A springy-looking piece of deadfall bent under his weight and snapped as it catapulted him forward. He fell again, felt the crisp brightness of a grazed forehead, and kept sprinting. Fired with adrenalin, he was stupidly exhilarated.
Paul reached the edge of the Flumes, and from the corner of his eye saw Lazeroff labouring through the woods behind him. Jory had fallen between two boulders and was trying to use his back and legs to brace himself. Without hesitation, Paul jumped onto the first rock, landed on all fours, and then sprang onto the next.
He slid, hugged the top, and steadied his feet. The river exploded into sound—he’d only heard his own breath before—a smashing of water against rock, against itself. Hissing, slapping spray, deep, gurgling notes of the undertow beneath. The world around him was violently reduced to the stone against his face, the water a quicksilver turmoil at the periphery of his vision. The river churned in disorienting, vertiginous patterns of light and shadow, and all that parkour stuff—his instinct and training, the altruism and courage supposedly at the root of the sport—abandoned him. He couldn’t budge or he would be swept away.
His very first climb at the gym with Christine, he’d nearly reached the top. Then, mid-stretch, he couldn’t find the next hold. All his weight rested on the toes of his shaking left foot and a desperately clenched fist. Just breathe, Christine had called up to him. Relax your muscles. He was perfectly safe, held by his harness, the rope, and belaying devices. She had him. And still, terror had pinned him to the wall until his leg muscles trembled and seized and finally gave out. Christine lowered him and he’d descended into embarrassment, the harness tugging and bunching at his crotch.
His lips brushing the granite, he sobbed out a laugh. What a fucking completely unhelpful memory.
When Is a Man Page 24