Beach Reading

by Lorne Elliott

  “Hi Wallace. Listen, Monroe says he wants a case of scotch.”

  “Fergie? OK. Sure. Why not?”

  “He says he’ll pay for it with a contribution to your campaign.”

  “Great!”

  “But he wants it delivered.”

  “Why doesn’t he just come and pick it up?”

  “I don’t know. He’s weird.”

  “That’s a fact. When’s he want it?”

  I covered the mouthpiece and turned to Rattray. “When should I say he should make the drop?”

  “Tomorrow night. No! The day after. I have to set up some stuff first. Tell them the day after tomorrow.”

  “Why would Fergie wait that long?”

  “Tell them he’s paranoid.”

  “Where should we do it?”

  “I don’t know. Make up something.”

  “Two nights from now,” I said to Wallace. “On the beach below the park office. He wants you to bring it in by boat.” I looked at Rattray. He nodded OK. “That’s what he says,” I said to Wallace. “It has to be by boat. There’s been a lot of surveillance around and he doesn’t want to risk it by road.” I looked at Rattray, who nodded back, “Good.”

  “Is there somebody else there with you?” said Wallace over the phone.

  “Monroe,” I said.

  “Put him on.”

  “No,” I said. “He doesn’t want to talk to you directly.”

  “Weird. But OK. So…” said Wallace.

  “Tell you what, Wallace,” I said. “I’ll find out the rest of the details and tell you tonight.”

  “OK. See ya.”

  I hung up and Rattray actually smiled.

  ***

  I’m not too proud of this next part, so I’ll get through it fast.

  I went over that night to MacAkerns’ and said, “I got a way to mess with their campaign.”

  “Do tell,” said Bailey.

  I left out the part about how Rattray was threatening me with the notebook, and when I was finished, Wallace said to Robbie, “It’s not supposed to rain for another four days.”

  “So?”

  “We’re gonna need that tarpaulin off the roof.”

  ***

  The next day I went to Rattray’s Office.

  “It’s all set up for tomorrow night,” I told him, and left him to think. With Rattray, that might take some time. And sure enough, later that day he told me to meet him tomorrow evening, an hour before the drop was to take place, by the phone booth near the park office.

  After work I went directly to MacAkerns’. Bailey and Wallace had dragged the skiff out of the mud where it had sat half-sunk at the water’s edge. They had taken the tarp off the roof and opened it out on the lawn, then laid the boat onto the center and wrapped the skiff with it, tucking the edges of the tarp up around and into the boat, nailing it all around on the inner gunwale and bending the nails over so that the tarpaulin wouldn’t pull off. They assured me that it should be perfectly all right, and sure enough, when they put it in the water it worked. It was ugly as hell but it floated like a cork. They placed a case of scotch in the centre behind the thwart. Robbie and Melissa found some oars in the barn.

  “You take it around and do your thing,” said Bailey to me. “Tomorrow night I’ll row it from your campsite.”

  “You know how to row?” said Wallace.

  “I was on the sculling team of the Charles River Boat Club for two years.”

  “Good, ‘cause I’m useless at rowing.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  “Oh yeah? Why?”

  “You lack the lithe grace and aristocratic manner of the born oarsman.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Voilà, la preuve.”

  “Jesus, where’d you find him?” Wallace asked Melissa.

  “Ask him what he did on the rowing team.”

  “Well?” said Wallace

  “I was the crew manager.”

  “So you don’t know how to row, either.”

  “Strictly speaking, no, but I have a good grounding in the theory. Fifty cents in the swear jar, incidentally.”

  I had to poke holes through the tarp at the oarlocks for the oars, but they’d work fine. I wouldn’t use them much to get around the point anyhow, just keep them handy if I hung up on the shore. I wanted to see how the tide took me. We waited for just when it was beginning to ebb, at 7:43 p.m., and I rowed out and waited off the dock until the water began pulling me away. It started so subtly that I didn’t realize I was moving until I looked ashore and saw that the MacAkerns’ house was wheeling out of sight behind the dune that curved around the side of their property. I was being towed by the moon, up there in broad daylight, almost full. I started to move faster, but because I was on the body that was moving, I still didn’t feel it, but when I looked up again, I was around the big dune, and I could see the point, and the highest dunes behind, and, across the inlet in the other direction, the harbour of Barrisway. Down by the end of the point terns were twinkling above the water, rising in excited flocks and suddenly dropping. How they saw what they were diving for was anybody’s guess.

  Where the bay flowed into the channel the rip grabbed and pulled that idiotic blue-wrapped boat and shot it through the narrows. The tide running out hit the waves coming in at the mouth, all jumping and joyful. Perhaps in this stirring-up was what the terns were feeding off. I spun out onto the ocean, then was swept around the point in an eddy which would have then pulled me back towards the inlet, but here I took the oars up and rowed parallel to the shore towards my campsite. I didn’t notice any east-moving current, as was marked on the navigational charts, but perhaps that was a general observation and not specific to today, which was good to know. I saw my tent ahead and approached and beached the skiff, nudged the boat into the shore and waited, looking at my watch and making notes. I had to wait only a few minutes before the tide left the boat solidly aground where it would be until the next high tide. I would still have two more chances to make the necessary observations before the rendezvous with Rattray.

  ***

  The next night I biked to the park office, mostly by starlight. The moon was behind a large bank of clouds moving north-east towards Newfoundland, but the rest of the sky was clear. I even saw a shooting star, but it was too quick for me to make a wish.

  Rattray was under the street light that illuminated the phone booth, more excited than I’d ever seen him. He was holding a piece of paper, looking at his watch, dancing his weight from one foot to the other like he was nearly peeing his pants.

  “I own you,” he said, taking his dialogue directly out of the crappy films he undoubtebly watched. Jungle Justice, starring Barry Rattray as The Horse’s Ass. I got off my bike and came toward him.

  “Time to arrest your friend,” he said. “Phone the police and tell them there’s a bootleg deal going down at zone two of the park.”

  “Why don’t you just phone them?”

  “Because, I’m Conservative recruitment officer for Barrisway Electoral District, and an arrest of the Opposition candidate cannot be seen to be politically motivated. Though it is,” said Rattray. He barked a short ugly laugh, overjoyed at his cleverness.

  “For fuck’s sakes, Rattray. Just give me back my notebook.”

  “You phone first.”

  “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  “You have no choice.”

  “I could just tell everybody everything.”

  “And have your friends know you betrayed them?”

  “I haven’t betrayed them.”

  “You are about to.”

  “Not if you don’t give me back my notebook.”

  “The old Mexican standoff,” said Rattray. Oh yes, there was no doubt about the cool-eyed competence of Barry Rattray. How could a tight
negotiation fail with someone who clearly had seen so many shit movies as him?

  “Well, fuck this,” I said, and started to walk away.

  I’ve learned since then that it always comes down to some moment, in fact, the moment of truth. And when it does, both sides are always damaged, so it’s pointless, but apparently the only way that things move on to something else. Then, though, was my first time. And I didn’t care. My strength was in my indifference. So what if everybody knew everything? So what if they didn’t like me. Anything was better than this pointless power deadlock. And Rattray saw that I was serious.

  “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,” he said in a weary sing-song, as if he was dealing with somebody who was obviously unable to take a joke. “Here’s your notebook.” He held it out.

  I took my time coming back, letting him know by my manner that I was willing to turn and leave any time. If he snatched the book back at the last moment, I would leave for good, and he seemed to know that I would. I watched him in the eyes the whole time. I took the book.

  “Now make the phone call,” he said, hiding his sudden vulnerability from me. It occurred to me that I could leave right then and there, just run away into the dark and hide, but that would make an already complicated situation even more so. See this through at least, I thought, the better to start again from something more solid.

  I opened the phone-booth door. Rattray told me the number to dial. I talked to the person who answered.

  “I want to report a crime that is being committed. On the beach below Barrisway National Park office, there’s a bootleg alcohol deal taking place. Now…Yes…As soon as possible. No. I don’t want to leave my name.” The girl on the other end asked for details.

  I hung up.

  “I told you to tell them your name,” said Rattray.

  “I didn’t want to.”

  “Well, don’t worry. Everybody will know who squealed. I’ll make sure of that.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Rattray.”

  “No. You go fuck yourself.” We were now equally witty.

  I deserved the total lack of joy I was feeling, considering that I was betraying something I never thought I would. But then Rattray absolved me even of that. “And just so you know,” he said. “That notebook? I photocopied it.”

  Perversely, this new information made me feel better. Now he deserved it. I walked over to my bike, got on, and pedaled out of his sight.

  Away from the light, you could see the stars again in half the sky. Down the causeway ahead of me I saw a dark shape parked beside the road. I stopped before I reached it and laid my bike on the ground beside the pavement.

  I waited. The moon came out from behind that bank of clouds and everything was bathed in a silver wash. I started to walk towards the shore between the clumps of wind-stunted spruce. The sand on the path beneath my feet was silent. When I got to the low cliff edge where my hiding place was, I could see the ocean, as calm as oil, rising from low tide. I scanned to the east and it was bright enough now to see Rattray fifty yards down the shore, crouched behind a spruce. The moon was full and luminous, so bright now that you couldn’t see the stars nearby. It was positioned exactly where predicted, riding its elliptic, a sure constant that real plans could be built on. When it had moved across the sky a little more in this direction, its increasing influence would drag one part of the film of water which was all the oceans of the world, releasing another part from its gravitational pull, and the tide on this shore would rise higher. It would be at its greatest height, according to the tide chart, at eleven-fourteen in Barrisway, but by my calculations, corrected for our position further along the coast, closer to eleven twenty. The boat would take about three minutes to float if Bailey and Wallace dragged it up just so. But I shouldn’t worry. The moon would do its job all right, and the weather couldn’t have been better. Human error was the only possible weak point.

  I waited some more. Over the horizon towards the Magdalen Islands was a huge thunderhead.

  I saw Bailey row around the point from the west, his oar-locks squeaking. As he approached I could hear Wallace, the big oaf, in the stern singing quietly, “I am a bold deceiver, murrah ringum madurrum madah…” Bailey’s theoretical-only knowledge of rowing, and the inefficiency of the boat itself, made for a clumsy crawl up the coast, but perhaps the current that was missing yesterday was helping him tonight because he was steadily advancing.

  I saw a dim flash of sheet lightning on the horizon which, in the same instant, illuminated the underside of that thunderhead. Bailey, pulling an oar, skipped the blade out of the water, lurched back, then resumed rowing again. The rumble from the thunder reached me faintly.

  I saw Rattray crouch lower in his hiding place as Bailey and Wallace passed in front of both of us, then ran the boat ashore and pulled the prow up from the water’s edge exactly two lengths of Wallace’s feet, as we had calculated. I saw them leave the boat and fast-walk up around the headland to the east.

  I waited.

  The tide rose slightly and bumped the boat.

  I saw Rattray half-stand in the moonlight, crouch again, then stand fully upright like a gopher, look up and down the shore, then at the boat, gently rocked now by the small waves. I was close enough to the road to hear Bailey and Wallace panting back to the van, which was the dark shape I had seen further down the causeway. I heard the van start up and drive toward the park office, but only because I was listening for it. From where Rattray was hiding it would be inaudible.

  I saw the rising tide float the stern, as it swung around bobbing.

  I saw Rattray creep out on the beach, then stop, indecisive. He was in a tizzy as to whether the tide was going to float the boat and take away the crate of bootleg liquor, his lovely evidence. Where was Fergie? he must have been thinking. All his plans hung on Fergie showing up.

  I saw the bow of the boat bob loose and the boat begin to drift off the shore.

  I saw Rattray run down to the water, in up to his knees to retrieve it and pull it onto the beach lest it be lost and Fergie not be caught red-handed. And just as he grabbed it I saw the strong light of a high beam flashlight, and heard a voice through a megaphone.

  “Stop! Police!” Just like on TV.

  Rattray stopped. “Oh, good…” I heard him say.

  A big beefy policeman and a younger policewoman walked toward Rattray. “Hands up, sir. Hands up!” she said.

  “I was waiting for you…” said Rattray.

  “We are arresting you for the charge of trafficking in illegal alcohol, or possession for the purpose of trafficking,” said the policewoman, who then took off her cap, and shining the flashlight in it, started to read from a paper she had taped inside. “‘It is my duty to inform you that you have the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay.’ Are you listening?”

  “Officer,” Rattray explained. “I was waiting for you. I was the one who called. Then it looked like the boat was floating away so I came down to stop it.”

  There was more jiggling with the flashlight as she continued to read him his rights. “ ‘You may call any lawyer you want. There is a 24-hour telephone service available which provides a legal aid duty lawyer who can give you legal advice in private…’”

  “I wanted to make sure the evidence didn’t disappear.”

  “Quiet please, sir,” said the policewoman. “‘This advice is given without charge and the lawyer can explain the legal aid plan to you. If you wish to contact a legal aid duty lawyer, I can provide you with a telephone number. Do you understand? Do you want to call a lawyer? You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say may be given in evidence.’” She put her hat on again and took the handcuffs off her belt.

  Bailey and Wallace approached from the direction of the park office, from where they had directed the cops.

  “You got him, I see,” said Bailey.

  “Oh
my God!” said Wallace, grossly overacting. “It’s Barry Rattray!”

  “Do you know him?” said the cop.

  “He’s working with the Conservative Party, isn’t he?” said Bailey.

  “I phoned you…” said Rattray to the cop.

  “Didn’t sound like you, sir,” said the policewoman.

  “Well. No. Not me personally. I got somebody else to do it.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because…I wanted…”

  She waited, but Barry didn’t want to say what he wanted. It occurred to him for the first time that this could be serious.

  “Better take up on that free call to the lawyer,” she said.

  “It was that little asshole, Christian. I got him to phone you.”

  “Do you know anything about this?” the cop asked Wallace.

  “Christian?” said Wallace. “I don’t know anybody by that name.”

  “Anyhow,” said the policewoman. “It was a woman’s voice.”

  In the phone booth, while Rattray was giving me the number of the police station, I had been dialing the Mac-Akerns’. Robbie, who’d been waiting for the call as planned, had answered, and then made an anonymous phone-call to the police and told them that she knew where the drop was going to take place. After Bailey and Wallace left the boat and whisky, they met the police by the park office and directed them to Rattray. Fergie was home asleep and didn’t know anything about any of it.

  “I’m not guilty…”

  “That remains to be seen. Now, come along.” And they walked him to their car.

  You can’t control the Things of God, but sometimes, if you observe them honestly, some of them are predictable. Things couldn’t have gone better, but pedalling home to my tent across the causeway, I didn’t feel proud of myself. I had never thought of myself as the sort of person who did the sort of things I was now doing, and it felt like I had betrayed something. That night, I had that same dream with that same sense of loss, and I thought I knew who it was on the beach I was drifting away from. He looked like me.

  10

  All next morning I still felt uneasy about what I’d done, but it couldn’t have been the memory of the look in Rattray’s eye that bothered me, I couldn’t even see his face as he was led away. So, it must’ve been what I imagined that look to be. For someone who was nervous even with legal language, who had probably always felt guilty, it must’ve been a nightmare for him. It had been only three years since homosexuality could get you up to fourteen years in prison.