by William Bell
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been sort of following the protests and stuff. Learned a lot, too.”
“Next thing I know you’ll want to move to the big city back east and ride the subway to work with a briefcase in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Ouch!” Elias cried as he picked up his glass of root beer with his fingertips.
Bryan tapped the newspaper. “You and Walter are famous, now, eh? Zeke, too.”
“Did they really quote your mother?”
“Yep.”
“She’s all right, your mom.”
Bryan was beginning to think so, too.
“That was a great thing you did, Elias. Helping Walter like that.”
“Yeah, well.” Elias shrugged. “The cops didn’t think so. They only decided yesterday, Zeke told me, not to charge Walter and me with contempt. And I wasn’t even on the bridge. Or is it ‘Walter and I’?” he added, smiling and shoving a french fry into his mouth.
Around them the midday crowd in Captain Ned’s — a restaurant done up with nets that swooped from the ceiling and old broken crab traps hung on cedar-panelled walls — buzzed with conversation.
“I got a leave from my job at the park, did I tell you?”
“That’s great. You know, it’s funny,” Bryan said. “You got hurt at the protest and your boss gave you a leave — which he should. Mom gets arrested, comes back to work the next day and gets fired. The whole town is split down the middle by all this.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m glad Zeke is back on the job,” Bryan said.
“He got the news this morning. He said they reinstated him but they gave him an official reprimand for investigating your former guests without permission. He may not stay too long, though. Zeke isn’t so sure any more that he’s cut out for cop work.”
“He’s one of the best ones we’ve got, if you ask me,” Bryan said. “He’s good at his work. What he did in Vancouver — on his days off — proved that. Even if it was unauthorized. They should praise him, not hassle him.”
Outside, a summer storm darkened the sky and whipped up whitecaps on Gray’s Passage.
“I don’t know, Bry. Zeke says that what’s happened since the spring has been pretty hard on him. He said he joined the force to catch bad guys, not throw his friends in jail.”
During the weeks after the fire-bomb incident, Bryan had spent most of his time in an empty house. He talked to Ellen every day or so on the phone, but their conversations made him feel no better. He felt lonelier when he hung up than he had been before they began to talk. Iris phoned most mornings to ask him how he was getting along. “Fine,” he’d report. “How about you?” “Fine,” she’d answer. From there they had nothing to talk about.
Jimmy had quit his job at SAVE. “I just didn’t feel right,” he had told Bryan the night he moved back in. “I felt like a prostitute or something. Or a crooked used-car salesman. Calling people up and trying to get them to come to meetings. I’m not a telephone guy. I belong in the bush.” Now he spent his mornings job-hunting in an empty landscape between those who hated loggers and those who supported an industry that had no work for him because he could not cut trees. His afternoons he passed in the Rainbow Room, honing the edge of his bitterness with cigarettes and beer.
Bryan’s uncle was no longer the jovial childlike companion of Bryan’s youth. Bryan’s mother was still in jail, his girlfriend still in parent-imposed exile. Bandages and pain had rendered his friends helpless and suffering.
Not since the death of his father had Bryan felt so numb, as if he had been injected with a toxic drug that dulled his nerves and neutralized his emotions. Paralyzed, he floated like a ghost from room to room of the silent house, turning on the TV and clicking it off again almost immediately, leafing through magazines, reading over and over his books on whales, poring through the album of family photos from the days in Drumheller.
He took most of his meals with Walter, after preparing them on his neighbour’s hotplate. Walter ate sitting in his broken rocker, wrapped in a shabby Hudson’s Bay blanket, and soon after succumbed to the medication he was taking against the pain and infection of his burns. Bryan helped him to bed, fed Dog and returned home.
One day Walter commented over their breakfast coffee, “Guess them traps are pretty full by now,” and for the first time Bryan took out the crab boat alone. He pulled up the traps, throwing the catch into wooden boxes and stacking the traps on the stern rather than bait and set them again. Then he returned the boat to Walter’s slip and prepared it for a long period of disuse. With the money from the catch he bought groceries and put them away in the small cupboards in Walter’s trailer.
That Sunday, Jimmy and Bryan drove to Nanaimo to see Iris, Sunday being the only day she was allowed visitors. Bryan had been looking forward to the trip, planning to visit Ellen for a few hours — until she told him over the phone that her parents were taking her to Vancouver that same day to see a play.
“They’ve had the tickets for ages, Bry. I can’t get out of this!”
Iris appeared full of high spirits but, do what she would, she was unable to drag a smile to her son’s lips. Misinterpreting Bryan’s moroseness for anger at her, she tried to explain to him once again why she had allowed herself to be arrested the second time. The more she talked, the more pained the look on his face, so she gave up and said with false cheer, “I’ll be home soon!”
“What home?” Bryan mumbled.
He could not tell her, because he could not put into words, that everything he loved and wanted was gone, and worse, it was not his mother who had deeply disappointed him.
SIXTEEN
“You’re too hard on yourself, Bry.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so.”
“Well, you are, but I’m not going to argue about it long-distance. So, what are you going to do today?”
“I don’t know. Maybe sit out in the yard, catch some rays and read.”
“Still devouring the newspapers, eh?”
“Yeah. Elias thinks I’ve gone mental. But I’m sort of hooked. The more I find out about this logging thing, the more I see that it’s … well, bigger than the fight about Orca Sound. Mom and Walter are right, Ellen. But lovers shouldn’t talk politics, right?”
“Right. Hey, how do you get four dinosaurs in a Honda Civic?”
“Dinosaurs are extinct. They’ve been gone for —”
“Okay, how do you get four extinct dinosaurs into an extinct Honda Civic?”
“Two in the front and two in the back.”
“Aw, you’ve heard it.”
“Yeah, Ellen, I fell out of my cradle laughing at that joke. I’ve heard every dinosaur joke in the book. I was born in the famous ditch, remember?”
“Want to have an obscene phone call, then?”
“Are you kidding? This is a law-abiding family. Didn’t you know?”
“Right, right. Guess I forgot.”
“I wish you were here, Ellen.”
“Me, too, Bry. Something tells me you could use a hug.”
“A hug, yeah. And —”
“You said you were law-abiding. I’m hanging up before you corrupt my ears. Talk to you tomorrow.”
Saturday morning, after he had eaten breakfast with Walter, washed the dishes, fed Dog and tied him up outside, Bryan threw a couple of bottles of juice and three granola bars in his backpack and set off along the shoulder of the highway.
So that he would not encounter activists and demonstrators he had waited until Saturday to retrieve his bike, which, he hoped, was where he had left it on the embankment near the river. The logging trucks did not roll on the weekends, so the demonstrators used the time to rest up.
The sun was high when he reached the logging road that led to the Big Bear River. It was barricaded by a red-and-white log resting on two oil drums. An RCMP cruiser was parked on the shoulder of the highway. Bryan did not recognize the two cops who sat inside, smoking and talking. Probably got the air conditioning on, he
thought, wiping the sweat from his brow and shifting the pack on his back. He hesitated for a moment, took a deep breath, and ducked under the barricade.
“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?”
One of the cops was getting out of the car.
“I’m going to get my bike,” Bryan said. “It’s down by the river.”
The cop shook his head. “This is a restricted area. The road’s closed.”
Bryan jammed his trembling hands into his pockets. “I thought this was a public road.”
“I said it’s closed,” the cop answered firmly. “The premier is coming out here in a couple of days and we don’t want any more trouble.”
“I just want to get my bike. I’m not going to cause any trouble.”
The cop pushed his cap back on his head and hitched up his belt, shifting his gun on his hip. “Sorry, son, you can’t pass.”
Bryan swallowed. “But this is public land. I can go where I want.”
The cop waved a thick finger in Bryan’s face. “Look, sonny, move off before you get into trouble.”
Bryan’s laugh brought a rush of scarlet to the big man’s face. He gripped Bryan by the shoulder, turned him toward the cruiser and shoved. Bryan stumbled and grabbed the barrier. He ducked under the log and began to walk back along the highway.
“Trouble?” he mumbled to himself as he walked. As if he could give me more trouble than I’ve already got. I suppose the cops are going to throw people into the slammer for walking down the wrong road on a Saturday afternoon. Just because the premier’s coming. Big deal.
On his way home, Bryan stopped at a milk store and bought a newspaper. He read the lead story as he walked.
Victoria News Packet
PREMIER TO CUT RIBBON
ORCA SOUND — Premier Charles Harrington will attend the official opening of Stage One of the Orca Sound Ecological Preservation Plan on Monday, the Premier’s Office has announced.
Unveiled last April, the plan, which Harrington says “strikes a fair balance between rival positions held by environmentalists and forestry interests,” allows Mackenzie Forest Industries to log two-thirds of the area. The remaining one-third will be protected, he said.
Orca Sound, one of the last relatively untouched temperate rainforests on earth, where several unique species of flora and fauna can still be found, has been the focus of demonstrations by environmentalists since MFI began logging there immediately after the announcement was made. Activists claim Harrington’s plan will make Vancouver Island the “Brazil of the North.” More than 600 have been arrested for defying MFI’s injunction against demonstrations.
The exact location of Premier Harrington’s visit has not been announced.
Bryan read the rest of the paper at the kitchen table, munching reheated pizza. His thoughts kept coming back to the article about the premier’s visit. That night, after Jimmy had gone to bed, Bryan set a fire in the fireplace, turned off all the lights and sat up late, feeding logs into the fire and staring into the flames.
The next morning, as usual, he went to Walter’s trailer to cook him breakfast. When they had eaten, Bryan said, “Walter, there’s something I have to do, and I need your help.”
Walter nodded and waited. Bryan pulled a chair in front of the rocker and told his neighbour what he had decided the night before. When he had finished, Walter was silent. Bryan studied his craggy, weather-beaten face.
“Do you think I’m crazy, Walter?”
Walter put his hand on Bryan’s shoulder. “I always knew,” he said softly, “some day you were gonna understand what they were telling you.”
“Who?” Bryan asked.
“The whales.”
SEVENTEEN
Bryan had lived in the Pacific Northwest long enough to know that he had to be prepared for all kinds of weather. He spent the rest of the morning assembling and packing his gear: rainwear, sleeping blanket, nylon fly; thick sweater; alarm clock (if he overslept, it would ruin everything), waterproof matches, toilet paper; sandwiches, granola bars, a thermos of coffee, a canteen of water; two large black felt-tip markers; Walter’s compass and topographical map, which Bryan covered with plastic wrap; a length of lightweight chain and a combination lock.
He packed the gear in his room while Jimmy worked outside, brushing stain on one side of the house, a slow process for a man with one arm out of commission. Satisfied with his preparations, Bryan made sandwiches for Jimmy and himself, penned a brief note telling his uncle he was over at Elias’s and would likely be there for the night, and slipped out of the house.
The midday sun was hot, the pack heavy and awkward, and by the time he made the docks Bryan was sweating. He stowed his pack in the bow of Walter’s cedar skiff, which was tied up behind the crab boat. He unlocked the cabin and hauled out the outboard motor and gas tank, then locked the cabin again. Soon he was on his way down the channel of Gray’s Passage, accompanied by the slap of waves against the hull and the cries of seabirds overhead. He steered the little boat southeast, holding course for more than an hour as the old outboard engine pushed him slowly past the month of Salmon Inlet, round the point of Big Bear Peninsula and then east into Big Bear Inlet.
Near its head the inlet began to narrow, and Bryan steered for the rickety dock on the north shore that Walter had told him about. One look at the rotten pilings and planks persuaded him to beach the boat rather than tie up to the old dock. He cut the motor and tilted it forward. When the bow scraped the rock shelf, Bryan scrambled over his pack and hopped out. He hauled the pack from the bow, then half lifted, half dragged the heavy skiff farther up the shelf. Lifting the motor from the transom, he lugged it to the fringe of evergreens. He hid the gas tank beside the motor and pulled the boat well up above the tide line.
Bryan pulled his map and compass from a pocket of the backpack, hung the compass around his neck and stuffed the folded map into his shirt pocket. He shouldered the pack and moved off up the shore until he reached the log cabin. At one time it had belonged to Walter’s family; now, it was decrepit, the door gone, the cedar shakes rotten and mossy. Beside the building, an overgrown path struck north along the edge of the forest. Bryan followed it up away from the shore. A short walk, and he reached the snag that Walter had told him to look for — a bleached and weathered skeleton of a Sitka spruce poking far into the azure sky. At its tip, the afternoon sun picked out the white head of a bald eagle, serenely surveying the deep blue water of the inlet below.
Bryan drank from his canteen as he watched the majestic bird launch itself with a screech, unfurl its wide wings, beat its way upwards to soar in wide gyres above forest and sea. After the eagle had become a dot in the distance, Bryan took one last look at the sea in the direction of his house, took a bearing, and headed into the cool shade of the trees.
The rough terrain rose sharply, and soon Bryan was panting as he struggled over and around moss-blanketed deadfalls on legs beginning to ache from the strain. He stopped for a rest, leaning against a fir to support the weight of the pack. Slow down, he told himself, panting. You’ve got lots of time. “You’re going to do this,” he said out loud, “and you’re going to do it right.”
Setting off at a more moderate pace, he soon crested a ridge, grateful for the respite offered by the relatively flat land, and followed it for a while before his compass directed him down a gentle descent into a sun-filled glen, through waist-high ferns. As he entered the trees again he noticed that the forest was gradually changing. The trees that canopied the forest floor were taller, thicker, farther apart. He came to a creek that rushed away to the southeast — probably to join up with the Big Bear River, Bryan figured — twisting and turning through clumps of red alder, under moss-covered logs. By a large gravel bar that encircled the massive roots of a fallen red cedar, Bryan shucked off his backpack. He shook the last of the water from his canteen, refilled it in the stream, took a long drink so cold it numbed the back of his throat, and topped up the canteen.
Bryan sat on
the sun-warmed gravel and took a long rest, eating granola bars and enjoying the afternoon sun that slanted through the bush. Birdsong trickled from branches. Squirrels scolded one another. The breeze sighed high in the treetops. Whoever, Bryan asked himself as he stood and shouldered his pack, came up with the idea that the forest was silent? He crossed the stream.
The terrain became rugged again. Bryan skirted swampy areas, struggled over rock outcroppings, climbed over fallen logs, constantly checking his compass, his only help as he slipped deeper and deeper into the forest. At the back of his mind, the itch of fear. He was not a woodsman; he could not read the forest the way Walter could. Would he become lost and wander for weeks until he starved? Trust the compass, Walter had told him back in the trailer. Don’t trust your eyes or your sense of direction: for someone like you, they’ll lead you around in circles. The compass will take you where the map shows. Trust the compass.
After several hours of rough trekking, Bryan found himself in an old-growth forest, and the itch began to fade. Consulting his map once more, he nodded to himself, sighed heavily, and let his pack slide off his aching back. To the east, he could see the ground rise gently toward a ridge, the ridge that was a line on the map, the ridge Walter had told him to expect. Leaving his pack behind, he climbed the ridge and looked down on a road. He nodded to himself again and returned to his gear. He had made it.
Calmed, Bryan looked around. High above him, the early evening breeze moved through the treetops. He walked toward a colossal red cedar, then around it. The trunk was easily five metres in diameter — you could park a full-sized sedan on the stump, he mused — and soared like a living highrise almost a hundred metres above him. He stepped between the shoulder-high roots as if walking between two cars, and touched the thick shaggy bark, damp with moss and lichen.
Bryan knew from his Ellen-inspired reading that, when the Vikings pushed through North Atlantic storms and touched the prows of their galleys to the eastern shores of North America, this cedar was already old. It stood among Sitka spruce, each at least ninety metres high and three metres thick. They were already mature when John Cabot sailed from Bristol to begin explorations that eventually opened the Atlantic cod fishery. To him and his sailors, and to many generations after him, the shoals of cod must have seemed as inexhaustible as this forest. Now the cod were gone, the fishery shut down. Bryan turned slowly in a circle, examining the giant living beings that surrounded him. Soon after Cabot’s era — a mere blink of time to these trees — Jacques Cartier sailed into the Gulf of St Lawrence and pierced the continent, looking for riches. They had all come looking for riches, Bryan thought, and believed they had found none.