by William Bell
The crowd around her took up the chant as they moved slowly toward the bridge. Bryan darted among them as quickly as he could, anxiously searching for his mother. At the edge of the throng, just up the rise at the side of the road, he caught sight of Otto and Kevin, taking pictures. They look like reporters covering a car wreck, Bryan thought.
Bryan caught up to the woman with the megaphone. Shouting above the chanting, he asked her if Iris was nearby.
“Yeah, she’s around here someplace.” Before Bryan could explain, the woman vanished into the crowd.
Bryan had no choice but to follow them. The road fell away more steeply as it descended to the river. He could see the bridge now, with the Big Bear River foaming beneath it on its way to Gray’s Passage. On the bridge about a dozen people were sitting quietly in the drizzle, several rows deep, facing in Bryan’s direction. The road rising uphill on the other side was empty.
“See her yet?” Walter had materialized out of the crowd.
Bryan shook his head and began to jog downhill. A car pushed along behind him, horn blaring, forcing him to the side of the road. It was the first of a convoy. Elias’s brother, Zeke, who had joined the RCMP about a year before, was in one of the cruisers.
As the last car passed him, Bryan saw a flash of pink up on the bridge. A shade of pink all too familiar to him. He peered through the drizzle. Two pink knees stuck out from under a dark green poncho. It was Iris, sitting cross-legged in the second row.
Like a lit match, anger flared through him. He began to run. You idiot, he thought. Your brother is on his way to the hospital and you’re out here with a bunch of crazies sitting on a bridge and getting your ass wet. “Who is willing to be arrested?” the megaphone woman had asked. As if they were at a carnival and this was all a big game.
“Mom!” Bryan shouted, jumping up and down, waving.
Things began to happen quickly. The cars stopped at the river’s edge. Doors flew open and cops walked toward the bridge, accompanied by a bald man in a trench coat. On the other side of the bridge, a lumber truck appeared at the top of the hill, laden with four mammoth trees, and on each side of the truck was a column of people, walking silently.
There were men, women and children in the columns. Each of them waved a yellow ribbon. Most wore yellow or red hardhats. A few signs bobbed up and down: We Want to Work and Obey the Law.
As the truck and its silent escort slowly approached the bridge, the bald man raised a megaphone. He sounded impersonal, even a little bored. He told the protesters that they were in violation of a court injunction that forbade such actions. “If you are not off the bridge before that truck stops moving, you will be put under arrest.” The megaphone dropped out of sight. The man walked back to his car as if he didn’t care whether the people had heard him or not.
Bryan’s fear grew with every metre covered by the big yellow logging truck. The crowd around him took up the chant again: “Save Orca Sound!” And now the counter-protest gave voice: “Let us work!”
The truck was on the bridge now, inching toward Bryan’s mother, its diesel engine barely audible above the chanting war. Cops marched purposefully onto the bridge. The truck came on, its huge grille towering over the silent, seated protesters.
“Mom! Mom! I have to talk to you! Dammit, get out of there!” Bryan screamed, pushing toward the bridge.
It was no use. The eighteen-wheeler came to a halt inches from the backs of the protesters. The counterprotesters formed a wall, waving their ribbons and rhythmically demanding to be allowed to work. Shoving two or three people out of the way, Bryan stepped onto the bridge.
“Mom! Uncle Jimmy —”
A burly cop pushed him back. “Take one more step on this bridge and I’ll have to arrest you. Now get away.”
“But I have to —”
The cop pushed again. Bryan fell backward. He scrambled to his feet, looking around frantically for Walter. The police were carrying protesters away and dumping them in the back of the blue van.
And then Bryan saw Zeke Wilson and another cop lugging his mother, like a drenched pink bag of sand, off the bridge.
THREE
Brian stood helplessly at the side of the road, watching the strange convoy. Two police cruisers drove slowly up the hill, their revolving lights flickering through the fog to the green wall of forest. Behind them, the yellow school bus with a few faces showing in the windows, then the van full of prisoners. And last, the huge eighteen-wheeler snorting along, hauling four trees out of the bush, flanked by people waving yellow ribbons.
When the truck had ground past him, Bryan saw Walter standing at the side of the road. His arms were crossed and, to Bryan’s surprise, he looked angry. He looked, in fact, as though he’d been saving up a few decades’ worth of anger and now it was forcing its way out. When Bryan reached him he turned and began to walk to his truck.
Bryan tramped along, head down in the rain, furtively searching for faces he knew — so he could avoid them. He did not want to be recognized, not where his mother had been picked up — literally, he thought without humour — for making fools of her whole family.
He climbed into Walter’s truck and they moved off, creeping along the road crowded with activists. She should be at her brother’s side, he thought, not playing politics out here in the bush. Rain beat on the roof of the truck, the wipers flapped, streaking the windshield, the old motor strained and grumbled, pushing the truck past the café and through the Wasteland. Not since his dad had been killed had Bryan felt so depressed and empty. His mother was on her way to jail, his uncle on his way to hospital.
Walter drove straight to Nootka Harbour’s small hospital and pulled up at the Emergency entrance. Bryan jumped down and ran through the automatic doors. He skidded to a halt in front of the desk and told the old woman behind the glass that he was Jimmy Lormer’s nephew. After clicking a few computer keys, she told Bryan that a doctor would be with him soon.
He sat down in a plastic armchair just as Waiter entered the waiting room. Bryan wondered if he looked as wet and bedraggled as Walter did. Across the room a young mother waited, a toddler with a runny nose squirming in her lap. Bryan fidgeted. He drummed his fingers on the chair arms. He crossed and recrossed his ankles. He flipped through a four-month-old magazine and tossed it back onto the coffee table.
Jimmy must be pretty bad, he thought, or they would have said something to me right away. If he was okay, the lady at reception would have said so. I wonder if — Bryan did not want to complete the thought. He felt an ache in his throat and suddenly his eyes filled with tears. He wiped them away quickly, stealing a glance at the woman nearby.
Mom should be here, he thought. She’s so damn selfish with her stupid causes. She —
“Bryan Troupe?”
Bryan jumped from his seat, eyes riveted on the doctor who stood in the doorway of the waiting room, holding a clipboard. His heart raced. Here it comes.
“Would you come with me, please.”
Walter and Bryan followed her into a small consulting room. She pushed the door shut behind them.
“Is he …?” Bryan asked.
“He’s not in danger.” The doctor reported that she had set Jimmy’s arm, which had been broken badly in two places, upper and lower. His leg was sprained and bruised. She had also treated his abrasions and contusions. “That’s cuts and bruises,” she added. “He’s in recovery and he’s sedated.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it, yes. If you want to call a mangled arm and a general mauling ‘it’.”
“He’s okay!” Bryan exclaimed to Walter, who nodded. Then, to the doctor, “Can we see him?”
“Not for a few hours, I’m afraid. By then, visiting hours will be over, so you might as well go home and come back tomorrow.”
Dog gave them a howling welcome, dancing on the end of his leash.
“How about I make us a pot of coffee, Walter, after we get into some dry clothes?” Bryan said as they pulled into the driv
eway and parked by the trailer.
Walter nodded and entered his trailer.
Bryan’s limbs felt heavy and lazy as he took a hot shower, then dressed in jeans and his warmest shirt to drive away the chill that had settled in his bones.
He went down to the kitchen and called Ellen’s number. When no one answered he looked up the number for the police station. Before the ringing started on the other end, he slammed down the phone. “The hell with her,” he hissed.
Walter pushed open the door, removed his boots and took a chair. Bryan poured the coffee, set out milk and sugar.
Walter took a noisy sip. “Interesting day.”
“That’s for sure. I’m glad Jimmy’s okay.”
“He’s a pretty tough guy, your uncle.”
Bryan realized, as he studied the weathered face across from him, that Walter must have been worried, too. He was fond of Jimmy — of all Bryan’s family, for that matter.
“Your mom’s pretty tough, too,” Walter added.
Yeah, that’s one word to describe her, Bryan thought. Stupid is another. Bryan reminded himself that when you were with Walter you had to listen carefully to his silences. Was Walter trying to tell him not to worry about his mom? Well, he wasn’t worried about her at all. She’d be okay. It was Bryan who would have to go out tomorrow and wonder if everybody would stare at him or point to him behind his back and gossip. That’s Iris Troupe’s kid. She’s in jail, you know. She got hauled away like a load of wood by the cops. You’d think a woman would have more pride. And that pink track suit. I tell you!
“Some people don’t appreciate what she’s trying to do,” Walter said.
“You think she should have been out there in the rain getting a police record?” Bryan shot back. “Making a fool of herself?”
The kitchen was silent. With a sigh, Walter got up and replenished the two mugs. He sat down again and stirred his coffee slowly.
“Long time ago,” he began in a low, almost expressionless voice, “this whole area used to be my peoples.’ Well, us Nootkas lost the land and we’re all scattered now. Some of us still believe the spirits of our ancestors don’t go away to some kind of afterlife like the Christians talk about. Me, I think the ghosts of the dead stay near the living. My ancestors’ spirits are walking over there on Big Bear and Salmon, Flower Pot Island, Vickers Island. We got different names for those places in our language. The spirits are still walking in the old forests, along the creekbeds and the beaches.”
Walter blew on his coffee and took a drink. Bryan waited.
“Now the tree-cutters are gonna drive them away from their ancient lands for good. I worry sometimes, wondering where they can go.”
Bryan thought for a moment before he said, “Do you think the spirits will leave if only a few trees — you know, the real big ones — are harvested?”
Walter smiled. “Interesting word, that. ‘Harvested.’ Like them guys are ploughing up potatoes, knowing next year they can come back and there’ll be a new crop ready for them to take. An ancient rainforest isn’t a field of wheat. You don’t ‘harvest’ a thousand-year-old tree. If you cut it down, you cancel it for good.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” Bryan admitted, wondering once again what there was about the way Walter talked that made things so clear.
“I hope you won’t take no offence, Bryan,” Walter said gently, “but maybe you don’t know what I mean. Some people think they can go into a forest, take the trees they want, leave the slash and bark and the timber that don’t pay lying around, and nothing changes. They think the forest is just like it was before they came. Only a few trees are missing. They don’t know. The whole thing — sea, sky, forest — it’s all connected.”
Walter joined his thumbs and index fingers to form a circle. “They’re all one. Change part of it, it’s all changed. We know that, us first peoples. That’s why, in all our bands, all our nations, the circle is a main symbol.”
Walter held up his mug, took a sip, looked at Bryan over the rim.
“You remember the time last spring when you fell out of the boat?”
Bryan laughed softly. “I sure do.”
“You heard the whales.” It was not a question.
How did he know? Bryan thought. Ellen was the only person he had told. “Yeah, I heard them.”
“I hope you won’t take offence, my friend. You heard them singing, but you don’t know yet what they were telling you.”
“You … This is weird. You think they were talking to me?”
“I think everything in nature — bear, eagle, raven, even trees — they all talk to us. The earth speaks, but nowadays not too many of us listen any more. Far as I can tell, whites have never listened.”
Before Bryan could answer, the phone rang.
“Bryan? Zeke Wilson. I’m calling from the station. Listen, Bryan, I feel really bad about what happened today. With your mom and all. I … I just wanted to call and tell you they’re processing Iris right now, and she’ll be released in about an hour.”
“Okay, Zeke.”
“And, Bryan, I won’t get a chance to talk to her. Will you tell her how sorry I am?”
“Sure, Zeke. I’ll let her know.”
Bryan hung up, then told Walter what Zeke had said.
“He’s okay, Zeke is. For a cop.” Walter stood and drained his cup. “We’ll go pick her up.”
“I’m not going,” Bryan said. “I’ll wait here.”
Bryan felt pinned by Walter’s gaze. “Okay, then.”
“Walter, can I ask you something?”
“Don’t see why not.”
“Well, considering the way you feel — you know, the stuff we were just talking about — how come you’re not in the movement with Mom?”
“Well, between you and me, I guess I had a couple of brushes with the cops a few years ago. I learned to steer clear of cops as much as I can.”
As he went out the door he added, “Maybe you got something there, though.”
FOUR
Iris asked about her brother as soon as she entered the house, and Bryan told her what he knew.
“Thank God he’ll be able to use his arm again,” she said, hanging up her poncho and shrugging out of her sweater. “Walter told me Jimmy was all right but — you know Walter — no details. I had nightmares all the way home that Jimmy had lost the arm. I’ve seen that happen in some of those logging accidents.” Bryan’s mother raked her fingers through her damp hair. “Well, I’m going to have a bath and get to bed. I have to be at the supermarket at eight tomorrow.”
“You want some hot tea or something, Mom?”
“No, thanks, dear. Just my nice comfortable bed. It’s been a long day. What were you up to?”
Bryan knew then that Walter hadn’t told his mother that they had been out to the river. She didn’t know Bryan had seen her picked up and thrown into the police van.
“Well,” he began, “as a matter of fact, Mom —” and he quit when he saw the tiredness and stress in her face. “Umm,” he began again, “I just, you know, got my work done at home and hung around.”
“That’s nice,” she said. And she dragged herself down the hall to her bedroom.
The next morning, Bryan woke early to the smell of toast and the scrape of a kitchen chair — his mother was having breakfast. Sitting up, he stuffed his pillow behind him, and leaned back against the wall and thought about what Walter had said the day before.
Although he respected his neighbour and had a lot of affection for him, Bryan could not buy all that talk about ghosts and spirits. A forest is a forest, he thought, not a spirit-land or a museum. It’s pretty, sure, but a tree is a tree.
When he heard his mother leave, he got up, showered, dressed and began to prepare breakfast for the two guests. Kevin and Otto entered the kitchen all set for another day on the picket line, Bryan observed, dressed like real live outdoorsmen in their designer active wear, carrying backpacks with Greenpeace logos on them.
“So ho
w’s your mother?” Kevin asked, pouring syrup on a stack of pancakes.
Bryan stood with his back to the two men, ladling batter onto the frying pan. “She’s fine, thanks.”
“Glad to hear it. We really admire her commitment, right, Otto?”
“Not too many like her around,” Otto said.
“And we’re glad to be staying with kindred souls, so to speak,” Kevin continued. “Know what I mean, Tom?”
“Tom?” Bryan flipped the half dozen pancakes and turned to face the men.
Kevin smiled. “Remember the fence?”
Bryan laughed. “Yeah.”
“So how about it? Are me and Otto in among kindred souls, like I said?”
“Well, not completely.” Embarrassed, he turned to the stove again. “My uncle isn’t exactly a tree-hugger.”
“Really. That’s too bad. Has a different view, does he?”
“Sort of.”
“How about you, Tom?”
“I’m what you’d call neutral.”
“Really. Well, I’m disappointed to hear that. Yes, sir. Oh, well.”
“That Indian next door in the trailer,” Otto said. “Is he in the movement?”
“He’s Nootka,” Bryan said. “He doesn’t like to be called Indian.”
“Whatever. Is he in the movement, then?”
Otto’s voice seemed to push too hard for Bryan’s liking. “I don’t know,” he said. “Anybody want more pancakes?”
“Not me,” Kevin answered, gulping down the last of his coffee and pushing back his chair. “I’m done.”
Otto rose, too, and began to pull on his jacket. Both men picked up their gear and went out the door.
That night Ellen came over for dinner, and when his mother got home — later than usual because she had dropped by the hospital to take some magazines and snacks to Jimmy — Bryan and Ellen had everything ready. Bryan used an original recipe of his uncle’s, which involved egg noodles, some hamburger meat fried with onions and garlic, a dollop of tomato paste and grated cheese. Ellen expressed her scepticism all through the preparation but, when the dish came out of the oven, she pronounced it a success.